“My Dear Friend—­You may, perhaps, be surprised at hearing from me after so long a time.  I received your last letter.  How long ago was that?  Twelve, fourteen, fifteen months?  I do not know.  It is as well to forget, since I at least would rather not remember what you wrote.  And I write now—­why?  Simply because I have the impulse to do so.  That is the best of all reasons.  I wish to hear from you, which is selfish; and I wish to hear about you, which is not.  Are you still working at that business in which you were so much interested?  Or have you given it up and gone back to the life you used to hate so thoroughly?  I would like to know.  Do you remember how angry I was long ago, because you agreed to meet Del Ferice in my drawing-room?  I was very wrong, for the meeting led to many good results.  I like to think that you are not quite like all the young men of your set, who do nothing—­and cannot even do that gracefully.  I think you used those very words about yourself, once upon a time.  But you proved that you could live a very different life if you chose.  I hope you are living it still.

“And so poor Donna Tullia is dead—­has been dead a year and a half!  I wrote Del Ferice a long letter when I got the news.  He answered me.  He is not as bad as you used to think, for he was terribly pained by his loss—­I could see that well enough in what he wrote though there was nothing exaggerated or desperate in the phrases.  In fact there were no phrases at all.  I wish I had kept the letter to send to you, but I never keep letters.  Poor Donna Tullia!  I cannot imagine Rome without her.  It would certainly not be the same place to me, for she was uniformly kind and thoughtful where I was concerned, whatever she may have been to others.

“Echoes reach me from time to time in different parts of the world, as I travel, and Rome seems to be changed in many ways.  They say the ruin was dreadful when the crash came.  I suppose you gave up business then, as was natural, since they say there is no more business to do.  But I would be glad to know that nothing disagreeable happened to you in the financial storm.  I confess to having felt an unaccountable anxiety about you of late.  Perhaps that is why I write and why I hope for an answer at once.  I have always looked upon presentiments and forewarnings and all such intimations as utterly false and absurd, and I do not really believe that anything has happened or is happening to distress you.  But it is our woman’s privilege to be inconsistent, and we should be still more inconsistent if we did not use it.  Besides I have felt the same vague disquietude about you more than once before and have not written.  Perhaps I should not write even now unless I had a great deal more time at my disposal than I know what to do with.  Who knows?  If you are busy, write a word on a post-card, just to say that nothing is the matter.  Here in Egypt we do not realise what