seen. He pays absurd compliments very naturally and cleverly,
rather my idea of a Frenchman, but he is much more candid all the
time. I shock people here if I simply say I don't like any one. If
you want to say anything against anybody you must begin by
saying--'Of course, he means awfully well,' and after that you may
imply that he is the greatest scoundrel unhung. Sir Edmund is not
at all ill-natured, and he can discuss people quite simply--not as
if he wished to defend his own reputation for charity all the time.
He won't allow that Adela Delaport Green is a humbug: he says she
is simply a happy combination of extraordinary cleverness and
stupidity, of simplicity and art. 'I believe she hardly ever has a
consciously disingenuous moment,' he said to me last night. 'She
likes clergymen and she likes great ladies, and she likes to make
people like her. Of course, she is always designing; but she never
stops to think, so that she doesn't know she is designing. She is
an amazing mimic. Something in this room to-night made me think of
Dorset House directly I came in, and I remembered that, of course,
she was at the party there last night. She must have put the sofa
and the palms in the middle of the room to-day. At dinner to-night
she suddenly told me that she wished she had been born a Roman
Catholic, and I could not think why until I remembered that a
Princess had just become a Papist. She could never have liked the
Inquisition, but she thought the Pope had such a dear, kind face.
Now she will probably tremble on the verge of Rome until several
Anglican bishops have asked their influential lady friends to keep
her out of danger.'

"'And you don't call her a humbug?'

"'No; she is a child of nature, indulging her instincts without