which economy obliged me to take. With the most hearty shake of the hand we parted, and we have exchanged several notes since I returned, for, as I said, she interests me, and I want to know more of her.
I have a standing invitation to Mrs. Jameson's Thursday evening meetings, of which I shall try to avail myself frequently. Life opens to me in London, social life particularly; but I am looking with pleasure to my return. I am too impatient to begin my practical career to be able to stay anywhere much longer where that is not to be commenced. . . .
April 7.—Miss Murray invited me to see the Queen's favourite little German baron, but I did not accept; for to go such a distance on foot or in omnibus in my silk dress to meet people with whom I should probably have little sympathy, and to whom I should only seem a quiet, ill-dressed person, seemed to me foolish. . . . Spent the evening at Mrs. Follen's. Miss Montgomery told me a very strange story of her father's 'double' appearing to her and her brother when they were children playing together during his absence in London. They were amusing themselves by dressing-up in clothes taken from a closet on the staircase, when, hearing their father's study door open and fearing reproof, they shut themselves in the closet, watching through a crack of the door their father in his dressing-gown with a candle in his hand slowly ascend the staircase. They then remembered that their father had gone to London, and rushed up to their mother's room, where she was dressing for a party, exclaiming, 'Papa has come home! We saw him come out of the library with a candle in his hand and go upstairs.' The authority of this story was unimpeachable, the details minute. What must one think of it?. . .
April 17.—Went down with my friend Florence to Embley Park. The laurels were in full bloom. Ex-
