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ed soil. I think I shall get on with her pretty well after all, especially motoring, when I can take her with plenty of ozone. She is a little afraid of her brother, though he's five years younger than she (I've now learned), but extremely proud of him; and it was quite pathetic, her cutting out the stuff about him in the papers, this morning, and showing every bit to me, before pasting all in a book she has been keeping for years, entirely concerned with Sir Lionel. She says she will show that to me, too, some day, but I mustn't tell him. As if I would! But about the newspapers. She didn't order any Radical ones, because she said they were always down on the aristocracy, and unjust as well as stupid; but she got one by mistake, and you've no idea how delighted the poor little woman was when it praised her brother up to the skies. Then she said there were _some_ decent Radicals, after all. Of course, one knows the difference between "Mirabeau judged by his friends and Mirabeau judged by the people," and can make allowances (if one's digestion's good) for points of view. But there's one thing certain, whether he's angel or devil, or something hybrid between the two, Sir Lionel Pendragon is a man of importance in the Public Eye. I wonder if Ellaline realizes his importance in that way? I can't think she does, or she would have mentioned it, as it needn't have interfered with her opinion of his private character. It's a little through Emily, but mostly from the newspaper cuttings, that I've got my knowledge of what he's done, and been, and is expected to be. He's forty. I know that, because the _Morning Post_ gave the date of his birth, and he's rather a swell, although only a baronet, and not even that till a short time ago. It appears that the family on both sides goes back into the mists of antiquity, in the days when legend, handed down by word of mouth (_can_ you hand things out of your mouth? Sounds rude), was the forerunner of history. His father's ancestors are supposed to be descended from King Arthur; hence the "Pendragon"; though, I suppose, if it's true, King Arthur must really have been married several times, as say the vulgar records of which Tennyson very properly takes no notice. There have been dukes and earls in the family, but they have somehow disappeared, perhaps because in those benighted days there were no American heiresses to keep them up. It seems that Sir Lionel was a soldier to begin w
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