the frame--beautifully carved. Is it the portrait of a former wife?
Or of a sister who committed suicide? Or was it merely bought in
Venice for the sake of the carving? Perhaps I shall know some
day--if it matters. In a moment of expansion during the Railway
Strike, Mrs. Clements will say: "_That_ was poor Walter's first. She
died of acute dyspepsia, poor thing, on their marriage tour, and was
buried at Venice. Don't ever allude to it because he feels it so
dreadfully." And my curiosity will have been rewarded for its long
and patient restraint. Clements' little finger on his left hand is
mutilated. I have never asked why--a lawn-mowing machine? Or a bite
from some passionate mistress in a buried past? I note silently that
he disapproves of palmistry--

But about Honoria Fraser, to whom I was introduced by Mr. George
Bernard Shaw twenty years ago: She was born in 1872, as _Who's Who_
will tell you; also that she was the daughter and eldest child of a
famous physician (Sir Meldrum Fraser) who wrought some marvellous
cures in the 'sixties, 'seventies and 'eighties, chiefly by dieting
and psycho-therapy. (He got his knighthood in the first jubilee year
for reducing to reasonable proportions the figure of good-hearted,
thoroughly kindly, and much loved Princess Mary of Oxford.)
He--Honoria's father--was married to a beautiful woman, a relation
of Bessie Rayner Parkes, with inherited advanced views on the Rights
and Position of Woman. Lady Fraser was, indeed, an early type of
Suffragist and also wrote some poetry which was far from bad. They
had two children: Honoria, born, as I say, in 1872; and John (John
Stuart Mill Fraser was his full name--too great a burden to be
borne) four years later than Honoria, who was devoted to him,
idolized him, as did his mother and father. Honoria went to Bedford
College and Newnham; John to one of the two most famous of our