society.

'My book goes on fairly well. I have been making a long study of De
Musset, with the result that the poems seem to me far finer than I had
remembered, and the _Confessions d' un Enfant du Siècle_ a miserable
performance. How was it it impressed me so much when I read it first? His
poems have reminded me of you at every step. Do you remember how you used
to read them aloud to our mother and me after dinner, while the father
had his sleep before going down to the House?'

Ten days later Kendal spent a long Monday evening in writing the
following letter to his sister:--

'Our yesterday's expedition was, I think, a great success. Mrs. Stuart
was happy, because she had for once induced Stuart to put away his papers
and allow himself a holiday; it was Miss Bretherton's first sight of the
genuine English country, and she was like a child among the gorse and the
hawthorns, while Wallace and I amused our manly selves extremely well in
befriending the most beautiful woman in the British Isles, in drawing her
out and watching her strong naive impressions of things. Stuart, I think,
was not quite happy. It is hardly to be expected of a lawyer in the
crisis of his fortunes that he should enjoy ten hours' divorce from his
briefs; but he did his best to reach the common level, and his wife, who
is devoted to him, and might as well not be married at all, from the
point of view of marital companionship, evidently thought him perfection.
The day more than confirmed my liking for Mrs. Stuart; there are certain
little follies about her; she is too apt to regard every distinguished
dinner-party she and Stuart attend as an event of enormous and universal
interest, and beyond London society her sympathies hardly reach, except
in that vague charitable form which is rather pity and toleration than