happy.

* * * * *

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

Men are very easily bored, my dear, if they have any brains. It is only
the dull ones who are not.

* * * * *

_From the Princess di San Zenone to the Lady Gwendolen Chichester._

If I believed what your cynical letter says, I should leave him
to-morrow. I would never live through a succession of disillusions and
of insults.

* * * * *

_From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester to the Princess di San Zenone._

Where are your principles? Where are your duties? My dear little girl,
you have married him; you must submit to him as he is. Marriages
wouldn't last two days if just because the man yawned the woman ran
away. Men always yawn. Hitherto, all San Zenone's faults appear to
consist in the very pardonable fact that, being an Italian, he is not
alive to the charms of bucolic England in rainy weather, and that, being
a young man, he wants to see his Paris again. Neither of these seem to
me irreparable crimes. Go to Paris and try to enjoy yourself. After all,
if his profile be so beautiful, you ought to be sufficiently happy in
gazing at it from the back of a _baignoir_. I grant that it is not the
highest amatory ideal,--to rush about the boulevards in a daument, and
eat delicious little dinners in the cafes, and laugh at Judic or
Chaumont afterwards; but _l'amour peut se nicher_ anywhere. And Love
won't be any the worse for having his digestion studied by good cooks,
and his possible _ennui_ exorcised by good players. You see for yourself
that the great passion yawns after a time. Turn back to what you call my
cynical letter, and re-read my remarks upon Nature. By the way, I
entirely deny that they are cynical. On the contrary, I inculcate on you
patience, sweetness of temper, and adaptability to circumstances,--three
most amiable qualities. If I were a cynic, I should say to you that
Marriage is a Mistake, and two capital letters could hardly emphasize
this melancholy truth sufficiently. But, as there are men and women,
and, as I before observed, property, in the world, nothing better for
the consolidation of rents and freeholds has, as yet, been discovered. I
dare say Krapotkine in his prison could devise something better; but
they are afraid of him. So we all jog on in the old routine, vaguely
conscious