on the beach go on in full force, and though there is nothing tangible, except Charley’s smoke, to object to, and it is the present way of young people, there is something unsatisfactory in it.  Edith does not seem to mind what her daughters do.  Margaret has no occasion to be uneasy about Jane, who always stays with the little ones while the maids are at supper, and generally takes with her the devoted Avice, who has some delicacy of throat forbidding these evening excursions.  Meg gets more boisterous and noisy every day, Uchtred being her chief companion; but as she is merely a tomboy, I believe her parents think it inexpedient to give her hints that might only put fancies in her head.  So they have only prohibited learning to smoke, staying out later than nine o’clock, and shrieking louder than a steam whistle!

17.—­Yesterday was a great success.  Avice was silent at first, but Metelill drew her out, and she had become quite at her ease before we arrived.  You would have been enchanted to see how much was made of our dear mother.  Lord Hollybridge came out himself to give her his arm up the stone steps and across the slippery hall.  The good old chief talked to her by the hour about you, and Avice’s eyes shone all the time.  After luncheon our kind hostess arranged that dear mother should have half an hour’s perfect rest, in a charming little room fitted like a tent, and then had a low chair with two little fairy ponies in it to drive her about the gardens, while I walked with the two gentlemen and saw things much better than in the former hurly-burly, though that was a beautiful spectacle in its way.  Avice, who has seen scores of fetes in college grounds, much preferred the scenery, etc., in their natural state to a crowd of strangers.  The young people took possession of the two girls, and when we all met for the five o’clock tea, before going home, Lady Georgina eagerly told her father that Miss Fulford had made out the subject of ‘that picture.’  It was a very beautiful Pre-Raffaelite, of a lady gathering flowers in a meadow, and another in contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers—­irises, anemones, violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy.  A friend of Lord Hollybridge had picked it up for him in some obscure place in Northern Italy, and had not yet submitted it to an expert.  Avice, it appeared, had recognised it as representing Leah and Rachel, as Action and Contemplation in the last books of Dante’s PURGATORIO, with the mystic griffin car in the distance.  Our hosts were very much delighted; we all repaired to the picture, where she very quietly and modestly pointed out the details.  A Dante was hunted up, but Lady Hollybridge and I were the only elders who knew any Italian, and when the catalogue was brought, Avice knew all the names of the translators, but as none were to be found, Lord Hollybridge asked if she would make him understand the passage, which she did, blushing a little, but rendering it in very good fluent English, so that he thanked her, and complimented her so much that she was obliged to answer that she had got it up when they were hearing some lectures on Dante; and besides it was mentioned by Ruskin; whereupon she was also made to find the reference, and mark both it and Dante.