After this flutter I was not taken on by fashionable ladies about books.

Lady Londonderry never belonged to the Souls, but her antagonist, Lady de Grey, was one of its chief ornaments and my friend.  She was a luxurious woman of great beauty, with perfect manners and a moderate sense of duty.  She was the last word in refinement, perception and charm.  There was something septic in her nature and I heard her say one day that the sound of the cuckoo made her feel ill; but, although she was not lazy and seldom idle, she never developed her intellectual powers or sustained herself by reading or study of any kind.  She had not the smallest sense of proportion and, if anything went wrong in her entertainments—­cold plates, a flat souffle, or some one throwing her over for dinner—­she became almost impotent from agitation, only excusable if it had been some great public disaster.  She and Mr. Harry Higgins—­an exceptionally clever and devoted friend of mine—­having revived the opera, Bohemian society became her hobby; but a tenor in the country or a dancer on the lawn are not really wanted; and, although she spent endless time at Covent Garden and achieved considerable success, restlessness devoured her.  While receiving the adoration of a small but influential circle, she appeared to me to have tried everything to no purpose and, in spite of an experience which queens and actresses, professionals and amateurs might well have envied, she remained embarrassed by herself, fluid, brilliant and uneasy.  The personal nobility with which she worked her hospital in the Great War years brought her peace.

Frances Horner [Footnote:  Lady Horner, of Mells, Frome.] was more like a sister to me than any one outside my own family.  I met her when she was Miss Graham and I was fourteen.  She was a leader in what was called the high art William Morris School and one of the few girls who ever had a salon in London.

I was deeply impressed by her appearance, it was the fashion of the day to wear the autumn desert in your hair and “soft shades” of Liberty velveteen; but it was neither the unusualness of her clothes nor the sight of Burne-Jones at her feet and Ruskin at her elbow that struck me most, but what Charty’s little boy, Tommy Lister, called her “ghost eyes” and the nobility of her countenance.

There may be women as well endowed with heart, head, temper and temperament as Frances Horner, but I have only met a few:  Lady de Vesci (whose niece, Cynthia, married our poet-son, Herbert), Lady Betty Balfour[Footnote:  Sister of the Earl of Lytton and wife of Mr. Gerald Balfour.] and my daughter Elizabeth.  With most women the impulse to crab is greater than to praise and grandeur of character is surprisingly lacking in them; but Lady Horner comprises all that is best in my sex.