any positive way, he cannot work his will with life, and so he employs negative tools. Naturally, I don't mean all this for you. What I really think about you is that you are domestic, that you love your family, and that you adore excursions into the country with them, but before your more sophisticated friends, Laura, you feel ashamed of your true emotions and you believe it is necessary to apologize for your natural feelings. In time, probably, you will cease to do this and begin to lecture me as, perhaps, I seem to be lecturing you now! But I am not, really. I am merely chattering, as I would chatter if you were here. I am too happy to give advice to any one. . . . I am deliriously happy!
Such a summer! Ronald is here—you know, the Duke of Middlebottom; at least, you have heard me speak of him. He's done such an amusing thing: taken a town house in New York in July to transfer the London season here. At least that's what he says he has been doing; I think he may have other reasons for being here. At any rate, he has carried his masked purpose far enough to give New York a July "opera season." Only one night, but what an opera! It really wasn't an opera at all, but there was music, which Bunny wrote, thereby convincing me that he is a genius. There was one moment when all veils were rent. You should have seen Mrs. Pollanger! But all of them sat naked, just as they will again in hell. That was my moment: I felt that Bunny, unconsciously, had done that for me. Certainly, nobody else appreciated it. It made no impression whatsoever on the person he thought he had done it for. She is a snake-charmer, or was for a day or so, really the most unusual and nicest child—she is nearly seventeen—I have ever met. She follows her in-