Arthur Balfour himself—­the most persistent of friends—­remarked laughingly: 

“St. John pursues us with his malignant fidelity.” [Footnote:  The word malignity was obviously used in the sense of the French malin.]

This was only a coloured way of saying that Midleton had none of the detachment commonly found among friends; but, as long as we are not merely responsible for our actions to the police, so long must I believe in trying to help those we love.

St. John has the same high spirits and keenness now that he had then and the same sweetness and simplicity.  There are only a few women whose friendships have remained as loving and true to me since my girlhood as his—­Lady Horner, Miss Tomlinson [Footnote:  Miss May Tomlinson, of Rye.], Lady Desborough, Mrs. Montgomery, Lady Wemyss and Lady Bridges [Footnote:  J Lady Bridges, wife of General Sir Tom Bridges.]—­but ever since we met in 1880 he has taken an interest in me and all that concerns me.  He was much maligned when he was Secretary of State for War and bore it without blame or bitterness.  He had infinite patience, intrepid courage and a high sense of duty; these combined to give him a better place in the hearts of men than in the fame of newspapers.

His first marriage was into a family who were incapable of appreciating his particular quality and flavour; even his mother-in-law—­a dear friend of mine—­never understood him and was amazed when I told her that her son-in-law was worth all of her children put together, because he had more nature and more enterprise.  I have tested St. John now for many years and never found him wanting.

Lord Pembroke [Footnote:  George, 13th Earl of Pembroke.] and George Wyndham were the handsomest of the Souls.  Pembroke was the son of Sidney Herbert, famous as Secretary of State for War during the Crimea.  I met him first the year before I came out.  Lord Kitchener’s friend, Lady Waterford—­sister to the present Duke of Beaufort—­wrote to my mother asking if Laura could dine with her, as she had been thrown over at the last minute and wanted a young woman.  As my sister was in the country, my mother sent me.  I sat next to Arthur Balfour; Lord Pembroke was on the other side, round the corner of the table; and I remember being intoxicated with my own conversation and the manner in which I succeeded in making Balfour and Pembroke join in.  I had no idea who the splendid stranger was.  He told me several years later that he had sent round a note in the middle of that dinner to Blanchie Waterford, asking her what the name of the girl with the red heels was, and that, when he read her answer, “Margot Tennant,” it conveyed nothing to him.  This occurred in 1881 and was for me an eventful evening.  Lord Pembroke was one of the four best-looking men I ever saw:  the others, as I have already said, were the late Earl of Wemyss, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt—­whose memoirs have been recently published—­and Lord D’Abernon