CHAPTER VI


FROM MISS EVELYN VANE, IN PARIS, TO THE LADY AUGUSTA FLEMING, AT
BRIGHTON.

Paris, September 30th.

Dear Lady Augusta--I am afraid I shall not be able to come to you on
January 7th, as you kindly proposed at Homburg. I am so very, very
sorry; it is a great disappointment to me. But I have just heard that it
has been settled that mamma and the children are coming abroad for a part
of the winter, and mamma wishes me to go with them to Hyeres, where
Georgina has been ordered for her lungs. She has not been at all well
these three months, and now that the damp weather has begun she is very
poorly indeed; so that last week papa decided to have a consultation, and
he and mamma went with her up to town and saw some three or four doctors.
They all of them ordered the south of France, but they didn't agree about
the place; so that mamma herself decided for Hyeres, because it is the
most economical. I believe it is very dull, but I hope it will do
Georgina good. I am afraid, however, that nothing will do her good until
she consents to take more care of herself; I am afraid she is very wild
and wilful, and mamma tells me that all this month it has taken papa's
positive orders to make her stop in-doors. She is very cross (mamma
writes me) about coming abroad, and doesn't seem at all to mind the
expense that papa has been put to--talks very ill-naturedly about losing
the hunting, etc. She expected to begin to hunt in December, and wants
to know whether anybody keeps hounds at Hyeres. Fancy a girl wanting to