which, I believe, will
interest you as much as they did me. I told Madame de Chateauvieux that I
should write to you to-night, and my letter, she says, must do in place
of one from her for a day or two. We have been to Torcello to-day--your
sister, M. de Chateauvieux, Miss Bretherton, and I. The expedition itself
was delightful, but that I have no time to describe. I only want to tell
you what happened when we got to Torcello.

'But first, you will, of course, know from your sister's letters--she
tells me she writes to you twice a week--how absorbed we have all been in
the artistic progress of Miss Bretherton. I myself never saw such a
change, such an extraordinary development in any one. How was it that you
and I did not see farther into her? I see now, as I look back upon her
old self, that the new self was there in germ. But I think perhaps it may
have been the vast disproportion of her celebrity to her performance that
blinded us to the promise in her; it was irritation with the public that
made us deliver an over-hasty verdict on her.

'However that may be, I have been making up my mind for some days past
that the embassy on behalf of _Elvira_, which I thrust upon you, and
which you so generously undertook, was a blunder on my part which it
would be delightful to repair, and which no artistic considerations
whatever need prevent me from repairing. You cannot think how divine she
was in Juliet the other night. Imperfect and harsh, of course, here
and there, but still a creature to build many and great hopes upon, if
ever there was one. She is shaking off trick after trick; your
brother-in-law is merciless to them whenever they appear, and she is for
ever working with a view to his approval, and also, I think, from two
or three things she has said, with a memory of that distant standard of
criticism which she believes to be embodied in you!

'M. de Chateauvieux has devoted himself to her; it is a pretty sight to
see them together. Your sister and she, too, are inseparable, and Madame
de Chateauvieux's quiet, equable refinement makes a good contrast to
Miss Bretherton's mobility. She will never lose the imprint of her
friendship with these two people; it was a happy thought which led you to
bring them together.

'Well, we went to Torcello, and I watched for an opportunity of getting
her alone. At last Madame de Chateauvieux gave me one; she carried off
her husband, Ruskin in hand, to study the mosaics, and Miss Br