erfully handsome; but can you live all your life, my dear, on
a profile?

* * * * *

_From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, to the Lady Gwendolen
Chichester, St. Petersburg._

Because almost all Englishmen have snub noses, Englishwomen always think
there is something immoral and delusive about a good profile. At all
events, you will admit that the latter is the more agreeable object of
contemplation. It still rains,--rains dreadfully. The meadows are soaked
and they can't get the hay in, and we can't get out of the house. Piero
does smoke, and he does yawn. He has been looking in the library for a
French novel, but there is nothing except Mrs. Craven's goody-goody
books and a boy's tale by Jules Verne. I am afraid you and mamma are
right. Coombe, in a wet June, is not the place for a Roman who knows his
Paris by heart and doesn't like the country anywhere. We seem to do
nothing but eat. I put on an ulster and high boots, and I don't mind the
rain a bit; but he screams when he sees me in an ulster. "You have no
more figure in that thing than if you were a Bologna sausage," he says
to me; and certainly ulsters are very ugly. But I had a delicious
fortnight with the duchess in a driving-tour in West-meath. We only took
our ulsters with us, and it poured all the time, and we stayed in bed in
the little inns while our things dried, and it was immense fun: the duke
drove us. But Piero would not like that sort of thing. He is like a cat
about rain. He likes to shut the house up early, and have the gas lit,
and forget that it is all slop and mist outside. He declares that we
have made a mistake in the calendar, and that it is November, not June.
I change my gowns three times a day, just as if there were a large
house-party; but I feel I look awfully monotonous to him. I am afraid I
never was amusing. I always envy those women who are all _chic_ and
"go," who can make men laugh so at rubbish. They seem to carry about
with them a sort of exhilarating ether. I don't think they are the best
sort of women; but they do so amuse the men. I would give twenty years
of my life if I could amuse Piero. He adores me; but that is another
thing. That does not prevent him shaking the barometer and yawning. He
seems happiest when he is talking Italian with his servant, Toniello.
Toniello is allowed to play billiards with him sometimes. He is a very
gay, merry, saucy, beautiful-eyed Roman. He has made a