don’t dream of it!  Let him enjoy himself if he can.  But how any man could, with that woman, old enough to be his mother!  I suppose she has taken some lovely clothes.  She always has that sort of attraction, and no doubt she is pouring sympathy into his ears in the moonlight about my unkindness.  It makes me feel perfectly sick that anyone can be such a fool as Harry to be taken in by her;—­having got away from her once, to go back again.

No doubt it was she prompted him to be so horrible to me (he behaved like a perfect brute you know, Mamma, and I never did a thing).  It is only because I can’t bear him to be made a fool of that I mind in the least, otherwise I am perfectly indifferent.  He can play with whom he chooses, it is nothing to me.  Gaston is devoted to me, and although I should not think of divorcing Harry, No matter what he does, because of letting that odious woman become Marchioness of Valmond, still it is nice to know someone else would absolutely die for you, isn’t it, even though I don’t want to marry him—­Gaston, I mean—­We arrived here last night.  We have come all round this way because now we are about it Octavia felt we ought to see Salt Lake City and San Francisco, and go down the coast to Los Angeles.  Then we shall have done this side of America thoroughly.  We only rushed through everywhere, of course, but got a general coup d’oeil.  Crossing the great Salt Lake was wonderful.  It seemed like being at sea on a bridge, and I could not help wondering what it would be like if the lake were rough.  You can’t think of anything so intelligent as the way that Brigham Young laid out Salt Lake City, seeing far ahead; he planned splendid avenues, and planted trees, and even though lots of them still have only mud roads, and little board shanties down them, they are there all ready for the time when the splendid houses are built, and tram cars and electric light everywhere; and such green and beautiful rich looking country!  No wonder, after the desert it seemed the promised land.

I should hate to be a Mormon, wouldn’t you, Mamma?  Worse than being a Chinee and having to sit at the theatre penned up with only females.  Think of sharing a man with six other women, and being a kind of servant.  It is natural they look cowed and colourless,—­the ones we saw; at least they were pointed out to us.  But really it seems much honester to call them wives openly than to be like—­but no, I won’t speak of it any more.  Only I will never share a man with another woman!  Not the least little scrap of him; and if Harry thinks I will he is mistaken.  To have six husbands is a much better plan; that, at least, would teach one to be awfully agreeable, and to understand the creatures’ different ways; but a man to have six wives is an impossible idea,—­specially as now it is not necessary, the way they behave.  I wish I had got Jane’s letter sooner, Mamma, because I could have amused myself more with Gaston than I have.  I feel I have lost some opportunities, snubbing him all the time.