dear Mamma.--Your affectionate daughter, Elizabeth.


Hazeldene Court,

_Thursday, 11th August_.

[Sidenote: _Lady Bobby's Diversions_]

Dearest Mamma,--I shall be home with you almost as soon as you get
this. But I must tell you about these last two days. The man I went in
to dinner with the first night was so nice-looking, only he did not
seem as if he could collect his thoughts enough to finish his
sentences, and it left them sounding so silly sometimes, but I found
out before we had begun the entrées that it was because Mrs. Westaway
was sitting opposite, and he was gazing at her. She looked lovely, but
not like any one I have seen yet since I stayed out. She had a diamond
collar and two ropes of pearls (Jane Roose said they were imitation),
and her arms quite bare and very white, but her skin must come off,
because I could see a patch of white on a footman's coat where she
accidentally touched when helping herself to potatoes. She had a huge
tulle bow in her hair, and her earrings were as big as shillings. Lady
Bobby Pomeroy said afterwards in the drawing-room to Jane Roose that
she should not take any more of her meals downstairs with this
"creature;" and she would not have come only that Bobby insisted, as he
was showing some horses, and it is convenient. And so, do you know,
Mamma, Lady Bobby has never come out of her room since, except just to
go to the Horse Show, which she drove to with Mrs. Mannering in a hired
fly. I don't call it very polite to the hostess, do you? This afternoon
she amused herself from her bedroom window by shooting at rabbits just