’Her beauty has a curious air of the place; and now I remember that her mother was Italian—­Venetian actually, was it not?  That accounts for it; she is the Venetian type spiritualised.  At the foundation of her face, as it were, lies the face of the Burano lace-maker; only the original type has been so refined, so chiselled and smoothed away, that, to speak fancifully, only a beautiful ghost of it remains.  That large stateliness of her movement, too, is Italian.  You may see it in any Venetian street, and Veronese has fixed it in art.

’While we were sitting in the garden who should be announced but Edward Wallace?  I knew, of course, from you that he might be here about this time, but in the hurry of our settling in I had quite forgotten his existence, so that the sight of his trim person bearing down upon us was a surprise.  He and the Bretherton party, however, had been going about together for several days, so that he and she had plenty of gossip in common.  Miss Bretherton’s enthusiasm about Venice is of a very naive, hot, outspoken kind.  It seems to me that she is a very susceptible creature.  She lives her life fast, and crowds into it a greater number of sensations than most people.  All this zest and pleasure must consume a vast amount of nervous force, but it makes her very refreshing to people as blases as Paul and I are.  My first feeling about her is very much what yours was.  Personally, there seems to be all the stuff in her of which an actress is made; will she some day stumble upon the discovery of how to bring her own individual flame and force to bear upon her art?  I should think it not unlikely, and, altogether, I feel as though I should take a more hopeful view of her intellectually than you do.  You see, my dear Eustace, you men never realise how clever we women are, how fast we learn, and how quickly we catch up hints from all quarters under heaven and improve upon them.  An actress so young and so sympathetic as Isabel Bretherton must still be very much of an unknown quantity dramatically.  I know you think that the want of training is fatal, and that popularity will stereotype her faults.  It may be so; but I am inclined to think, from my first sight of her, that she is a nature that will gather from life rather what stimulates it than what dulls and vulgarises it.  Altogether, when I compare my first impressions of her with the image of her left by your letters, I feel that I have been pleasantly surprised.  Only in the matter of intelligence.  Otherwise it has, of course, been your descriptions of her that have planted and nurtured in me that strong sense of attraction which blossomed into liking at the moment of personal contact.’

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’August 10.