course, he means awfully well,’ and after that you may imply that he is the greatest scoundrel unhung.  Sir Edmund is not at all ill-natured, and he can discuss people quite simply—­not as if he wished to defend his own reputation for charity all the time.  He won’t allow that Adela Delaport Green is a humbug:  he says she is simply a happy combination of extraordinary cleverness and stupidity, of simplicity and art.  ’I believe she hardly ever has a consciously disingenuous moment,’ he said to me last night.  ’She likes clergymen and she likes great ladies, and she likes to make people like her.  Of course, she is always designing; but she never stops to think, so that she doesn’t know she is designing.  She is an amazing mimic.  Something in this room to-night made me think of Dorset House directly I came in, and I remembered that, of course, she was at the party there last night.  She must have put the sofa and the palms in the middle of the room to-day.  At dinner to-night she suddenly told me that she wished she had been born a Roman Catholic, and I could not think why until I remembered that a Princess had just become a Papist.  She could never have liked the Inquisition, but she thought the Pope had such a dear, kind face.  Now she will probably tremble on the verge of Rome until several Anglican bishops have asked their influential lady friends to keep her out of danger.’

     “‘And you don’t call her a humbug?’

“’No; she is a child of nature, indulging her instincts without reflection.  And please mark one thing, young lady; her models are all good women—­very good women—­and that’s not a point to be overlooked.’

“I told him—­I could not help it—­how funny she had been yesterday, talking of going to early church.  ’I do love the little birds quite early,’ she said, ’and one can see the changes of the season even in London, going every day, you know, and one feels so full of hope walking in the early morning fasting, and hope is next to charity, isn’t it?—­though, of course, not so great.’

     “And she has been out in the shut motor exactly once in the early
     morning since I came up, and she knew that I knew it.

“However, Sir Edmund maintained that, at the moment, Adela quite believed she went out early every day, and I am not sure he is not right.  But then, you see, Carey, that with her power of believing what she likes, and of intriguing without knowing it, I am not quite sure that she will last very well.  She might get tired of me—­quite believe I had done something which I had not done at all!  And then the innocent little intrigues might become less amusing to me than to other people.  However, I believe I am useful for the present, and the life here suits me on the whole.  But I will report again soon if the symptoms become more unfavourable, and ask your opinion as to my plans for the season if the Delaport Green alliance breaks down before then.

“Yours affectionately,