ngs she would have liked me to do. I guess
you've wondered at my dandy clothes, and shiny finger nails. Well, it's
just to please her--if she's looking on." Wasn't he a man worth loving,
Mamma! And of course she did not mind dying for him, and how happy and
glad she must be now, if she is "looking on." Somehow the whole story
has made me so long for Harry, that I have been perfectly miserable all
the evening, and if you think you could cable to him and tell him to
come back I think perhaps you might, and I will say I am sorry.

Your affectionate daughter,

ELIZABETH.

SAN FRANCISCO.

San Francisco.

Dearest Mamma,--I have just got a letter from Jane Roose about having
heard of Mrs. Smith's being on the ship with Harry. Has it come to your
ears, too? What on earth could a woman like that want to be going to
Zanzibar for, unless she was hunting some man who was going to hunt
lions? I call it most extraordinary, don't you? And probably that is
what these papers meant by saying he had gone to India with a fair
haired widow, and I was so silly I never suspected a thing. Well, if he
thinks it will annoy me he is very much mistaken. I don't care in _the
least_, and am amusing myself _awfully_ with Gaston, and you can tell
him so; and as for cabling to him, as I think I asked you to in my last
letter, don't dream of it! Let him enjoy himself if he can. But how any
man could, with that woman, old enough to be his mother! I suppose she
has taken some lovely clothes. She always has that sort of attraction,
and no doubt she is pouring sympathy into his ears in the moonlight
about my unkindness. It makes me feel perfectly sick that anyone can be
such a fool as Harry to be taken in by her;--having got away from her
once, to go back again.

No doubt it was she prompted him to be so horrible to me (he behaved
like a perfect brute you know, Mamma, and I never did a thing). It is
only because I can't bear him to be made a fool of that I mind in the
least, otherwise I am perfectly indifferent. He can play with whom he
chooses, it is nothing to me. Gaston is devoted to me, and although I
should not think of divorcing Harry, No matter what he does, because of
letting that odious woman become Marchioness of Valmond, still it is
nice to know someone else would absolutely die for you, isn't it, even
though I don't want to marry him--Gaston, I mean--We arrived here last
night. We have come all round this way because now w