dy B sat down to whist. The Frenchmen smoked of
course (they were really modest gentlemen, and seemed dismayed), and
Lady B played for the next hour or two with a cigar continually in her
mouth--never out of it. She certainly smoked six or eight. Lady A gave
in soon--I think she only did it out of vanity. American lady had been
smoking all the morning. I took no more; and Lady B and the Frenchmen
had it all to themselves.

"Conceive this in a great hotel, with not only their own servants, but
half a dozen waiters coming constantly in and out! I showed no atom of
surprise; but I never _was_ so surprised, so ridiculously taken aback,
in my life; for in all my experience of 'ladies' of one kind and
another, I never saw a woman--not a basket woman or a gypsy--smoke,
before!" He lived to have larger and wider experience, but there was
enough to startle as well as amuse him in the scene described.

But now Saturday is come; he has hurried back for the friends who are on
their way to his cottage; and on his arrival, even before they have
appeared, he writes to tell me his better news of himself and his work.

"In the breathless interval" (Rosemont: 3rd of October) "between our
return from Geneva and the arrival of the Talfourds (expected in an hour
or two), I cannot do better than write to you. For I think you will be
well pleased if I anticipate my promise, and Monday, at the same time. I
have been greatly better at Geneva, though I still am made uneasy by
occasional giddiness and headache: attributable, I have not the least
doubt, to the absence of streets. There is an idea here, too, that
people are occasionally made despondent and sluggish in their spirits by
this great mass of still water, lake Leman. At any rate I have been very
uncomfortable: at any rate I am, I hope, greatly better: and (lastly) at
any rate I hope and trust, _now_, the Christmas book will come in due
course!! I have had three very good days' work at Geneva, and trust I
may finish the second part (the third is the shortest) by this day week.
Whenever I finish it, I will send you the first two together. I do not
think they can begin to illustrate it, until the third arrives; for it
is a single minded story, as it were, and an artist should know the
end: which I don't think very likely, unless he reads it." Then, after
relating a superhuman effort he was making to lodge his visitors in his
doll's house ("I didn't like the idea of turning them out at nigh