Don't think I underrate your
kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could
give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and
Valentine will exact all his sweet young wife's love and care.
I have written you a letter which I am sure will require double postage;
so I will say no more except goodbye. Take care of yourself, dear one.
Practise your part in our favourite duets; remember your morning walk in
the garden; and don't wear out your eyes over the big books that Mr.
Hawkehurst is obliged to read.
Ever your affectionate
DIANA.
* * * * *
_From Charlotte Halliday to Diana Paget_.
The dullest house in Christendom, Monday.
EVER DEAREST Di,--Your letter was a welcome relief to the weariness
of my existence. How I wish I were with you! But that is too bright a
dream. I am sure I should idolise Beaubocage. I should not mind the
dismal row of poplars, or the flat landscape, or the dusty road, or
anything, so long as it was not like Bayswater. I languish for a change,
dear. I have seen so little of the world, except the dear moorland
farmhouse at Newhall. I don't think I was ever created to be "cabined,
cribbed, confined," in such a narrow life as this, amid such a dull,
unchanging round of daily commonplace. Sometimes, when the cold spring
moon is shining over the tree-tops in Kensington-Gardens, I think of
Switzerland, and the snow-clad mountains and fair Alpine valleys we have
read of and talked of, until my heart aches at the thought that I may
never see them; and to think that there are people in whom the word
'Savoy' awakes no fairer image than a cabbage! Ah, my poor dear! isn't it
almost wicked of me to complain, when _you_ have had such bitter
experience of the hard cruel world?
I am quite in love with your dear Mademoiselle Lenoble; almost as deeply
as I am in love with your magnanimous, chivalrous, generous,
audacious--everything ending in _ous_--Monsieur Lenoble.
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