“She’s a perfect dear, Louis; so sweet and kind to me, so unaffected, so genuine, so humorous about herself and her funny title.  She told me that she would gladly shed it if she were not obliged to shed her legacy with it.  I don’t blame her.  What an awful title—­when you translate it!

“Sam is temporarily laid up.  He attempted to milk a cow and she kicked him; and he’s lying in a hammock and Helene is reading to him, while Harry paints her portrait.  Oh, dear—­I love Harry Annan, but he can’t paint!

“Dearest—­as I sit here in my room with the chintz curtains blowing and the sun shining on the vines outside my open windows, I am thinking of you; and my girl’s heart is very full—­very humble in the wonder of your love for me—­a miracle ever new, ever sweeter, ever holier.

“I pray that it be given to me to see the best way for your happiness and your welfare; I pray that I may not be confused by thought of self.

“Dear, the spring is going very swiftly.  I can scarcely believe that May is already here—­is already passing—­and that the first of June is so near.

“Will you always love me?  Will you always think tenderly of me—­happily—!  Alas, it is a promise nobody can honestly make.  One can be honest only in wishing it may be so.

“Dearest of men, the great change is near at hand—­nearer than I can realise.  Do you still want me?  Is the world impossible without me?  Tell me so, Louis; tell me so now—­and in the years to come—­very often—­very, very often.  I shall need to hear you say it; I understand now how great my need will be to hear you say it in the years to come.”

Writing to him in a gayer mood a week later: 

“It is perfectly dear of you to tell me to remain.  I do miss you; I’m simply wild to see you; but I am getting so strong, so well, so deliciously active and vigorous again.  I was rather run down in town.  But in the magic of this air and sunshine I have watched the reincarnation of myself.  I swim, I row, I am learning to sit a horse; I play tennis—­and I flirt, Monsieur—­shamelessly, with Sam and Harry.  Do you object—­

“We had such a delightful time—­a week-end party, perfectly informal and crazy; Mrs. Hind-Willet—­who is such a funny woman, considering the position she might occupy in society—­and Jose Querida—­just six of us, until—­and this I’m afraid you may not like—­Mrs. Hind-Willet telephoned Penrhyn Cardemon to come over.

“You know, Louis, he seems a gentleman, though it is perfectly certain that he isn’t.  I hate and despise him; and have been barely civil to him.  But in a small company one has to endure such things with outward equanimity; and I am sure that nobody suspects my contempt for him and that my dislike has not caused one awkward moment.”

She wrote again: 

“I beg of you not to suggest to your sister that she call on me.  Try to be reasonable, dear.  Mrs. Collis does not desire to know me.  Why should she?  Why should you wish to have me meet her?  If you have any vague ideas that my meeting her might in any possible way alter a situation which must always exist between your family and myself, you are utterly mistaken, dearest.