ht up where you left off; and he is almost as fond of discussing
things as William Platt is. He is splendidly educated, in the German
style, and he told me the other day that he was an "intellectual broom."
Well, if he is, he sweeps clean; I told him that. After he has been
talking to me I feel as if I hadn't got a speck of dust left in my mind
anywhere. It's a most delightful feeling. He says he's an observer; and
I am sure there is plenty over here to observe. But I have told you
enough for to-day. I don't know how much longer I shall stay here; I am
getting on so fast that it sometimes seems as if I shouldn't need all the
time I have laid out. I suppose your cold weather has promptly begun, as
usual; it sometimes makes me envy you. The fall weather here is very
dull and damp, and I feel very much as if I should like to be braced up.

CHAPTER VI

FROM MISS EVELYN VANE, IN PARIS, TO THE LADY AUGUSTA FLEMING, AT
BRIGHTON.

Paris, September 30th.

Dear Lady Augusta--I am afraid I shall not be able to come to you on
January 7th, as you kindly proposed at Homburg. I am so very, very
sorry; it is a great disappointment to me. But I have just heard that it
has been settled that mamma and the children are coming abroad for a part
of the winter, and mamma wishes me to go with them to Hyeres, where
Georgina has been ordered for her lungs. She has not been at all well
these three months, and now that the damp weather has begun she is very
poorly indeed; so that last week papa decided to have a consultation, and
he and mamma went with her up to town and saw some three or four doctors.
They all of them ordered the south of France, but they didn't agree about
the place; so that mamma herself decided for Hyeres, because it is the
most economical. I believe it is very dull, but I hope it will do
Georgina good. I am afraid, however, that nothing will do her good until
she consents to take more care of herself; I am afraid she is very wild
and wilful, and mamma tells me that all this month it has taken papa's
positive orders to make her stop in-doors. She is very cross (mamma
writes me) about coming abroad, and doesn't seem at all to mind the
expense that papa has been put to--talks very ill-naturedly about losing
the hunting, etc. She expected to begin to hunt in December, and wants
to know whether anybody keeps hounds at Hyeres. Fancy a girl wanting to
follow the hounds when her lungs are so bad! But I dar