frightfully rich person who has only lately been admitted into this inner
circle because her daughters have both married foreign Princes, said to me,
she loved the English, and was indeed English herself and some distant
connection of our King, being descended from Queen Elizabeth!!! It was
rather unfortunate her having pitched upon our Virgin Queen, wasn't it,
Mamma!? But perhaps as she had rather an Italian look it was the affair of
the Venetian attaché, and when I suggested that to her, she gazed at me
blankly and said, "Why, no, there never has been any side-tracking in our
family; we've always been virtuous and always shall be."

Now that you know, generally, what a luncheon is, I must tell you of the
particular one at Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield's. She is the dearest old
lady you ever met, Mamma--witty and quaint and downright, with an immense
chic--grey hair brushed up into the most elaborate coiffure, jet black eyes
with the wickedest twinkle in them, and a strong cleft in a double chin.
She is rather stout but has Paris clothes and perfect jewels. She is not a
bit like English old ladies, sticking to their hideous early Victorian
settings for their diamonds; hers are the very latest, and although she is
seventy-eight, she crosses the ocean twice a year to have her frocks
fitted, and see what is going on.

She was of a real old Southern family, before the war, very rich and
aristocratic. She, of course, never mentions the Mayflower or the
cavaliers, but you can read all about her ancestors in any history of
America. She has such a strong sense of humour and the fitness of things,
that she has adapted herself to the present, instead of remaining aloof and
going to the wall as she told me so many of her friends and relations did.

We met at Mrs. Latour's (you know Valerie Latour, Lady Holloway's sister;
when she is in England she often stays with us at Valmond). She took to