to play or be serious, as you please; but in either case ’Merthyr is never a buffoon nor a parson’—­Lady C. remarked this morning; and that describes him, if it were not for the detestable fling at the clergy, which she never misses.  It seems in her blood to think that all priests are hypocrites.  What a little boat to be in on a stormy sea, Bella!  She appears to have no concern about it.  Whether she adores Wilfrid or not I do not pretend to guess.  She snubs him—­a thing he would bear from nobody but her.  I do believe he feels flattered by it.  He is chiefly attentive to Miss Ford, whom I like and do not like, and like and do not like—­but do like.  She is utterly cold, and has not an affection on earth.  Sir T.—­I have not a dictionary—­calls her a fair clictic, I think. (Let even Cornelia read hard, or woe to her in their hours of privacy!—­his vocabulary grows distressingly rich the more you know him.  I am not uneducated, but he introduces me to words that seem monsters; I must pretend to know them intimately.) Well, whether a clictic or not—­and pray, burn this letter, lest I should not have the word correct—­she has the air of a pale young princess above any creature I have seen in the world.  I know it has struck Wilfred also; my darling and I are ever twins in sentiment.  He converses with Miss Ford a great deal.  Lady C. is peculiarly civil to Captain G. We scud along, and are becalmed.  ’Having no will of our own, we have no knowledge of contrary winds,’ as Mr. Powys says.—­The word is ‘eclictic,’ I find.  I ventured on it, and it was repeated; and I heard that I had missed a syllable.  Ask C. to look it out—­I mean, to tell me they mining on a little slip of paper in your next.  I would buy a pocket-dictionary at one of the ports, but you are never alone.  “Aesthetic,” we know.  Mr. Barrett used to be of service for this sort of thing.  I admit I am inferior to Mrs. Bayruffle, who, if men talk difficult words in her presence, holds her chin above the conversation, and seems to shame them.  I love to learn—­I love the humility of learning.  And there is something divine in the idea of a teacher.  I listen to Sir T. on Parliament and parties, and chide myself if my interest flags.  His algebra-puzzles, or Euclid-puzzles in figures—­sometimes about sheep-boys and sheep, and hurdles or geese, oxen or anything—­are delicious:  he quite masters the conversation with them.  I disagree with Mrs. Bayruffle when she complains that they are posts in the way of speech.  There is a use in all men; and though she is an acknowledged tactician materially, she cannot see she has in Sir T. a quality necessary to intellectual conversation, if she knew how to employ it.”