"We are leading our usual quiet life here," she wrote, "with the
ordinary round of tennis parties and picnics to enliven us. The
children have all been wonderfully well, and I think you will see a
great improvement in your god-daughter when you next come to stay
with us"--"Oh dear!" sighed Mrs. Milton-Cleave, "how dull and stupid
I am to-night! I can't think of a single thing to say." Then at
length I flashed into her mind, and with a sigh of relief and a
little rising flush of excitement she went on much more rapidly.

"It is such a comfort to be quite at rest about them, and to see
them all looking so well. But I suppose one can never be without
some cause of worry, and just now I am very unhappy about that nice
girl Gertrude Morley whom you admired so much when you were last
here. The whole neighbourhood has been dominated this year by a
young Polish merchant named Sigismund Zaluski, who is very clever
and musical and knows well how to win popularity. He has taken Ivy
Cottage for four mouths, and is, I fear, doing great mischief. The
Morleys are his special friends, and I greatly fear he is making
love to Gertrude. Now I know privately, on the very best authority,
that although he has so completely deceived every one and has
managed so cleverly to pose as a respectable man, that Mr. Zaluski
is really a Nihilist, a free-lover, an atheist, and altogether a
most unprincipled man. He is very clever, and speaks English most
fluently, indeed he has lived in London since the spring of 1881--he
told me so himself. I cannot help fancying that he must have been
concerned in the assassination of the late Czar, which you will
remember took place in that year early in March. It is terrible to
think of the poor Morleys entering blindfold on such an undesirable
connection; but, at the same time, I really do not feel that I can