Mrs. Ambrose was writing a very long letter.  Beginning “Dear Bernard,” it went on to describe what had been happening in the Villa San Gervasio during the past three months, as, for instance, that they had had the British Consul to dinner, and had been taken over a Spanish man-of-war, and had seen a great many processions and religious festivals, which were so beautiful that Mrs. Ambrose couldn’t conceive why, if people must have a religion, they didn’t all become Roman Catholics.  They had made several expeditions though none of any length.  It was worth coming if only for the sake of the flowering trees which grew wild quite near the house, and the amazing colours of sea and earth.  The earth, instead of being brown, was red, purple, green.  “You won’t believe me,” she added, “there is no colour like it in England.”  She adopted, indeed, a condescending tone towards that poor island, which was now advancing chilly crocuses and nipped violets in nooks, in copses, in cosy corners, tended by rosy old gardeners in mufflers, who were always touching their hats and bobbing obsequiously.  She went on to deride the islanders themselves.  Rumours of London all in a ferment over a General Election had reached them even out here.  “It seems incredible,” she went on, “that people should care whether Asquith is in or Austen Chamberlin out, and while you scream yourselves hoarse about politics you let the only people who are trying for something good starve or simply laugh at them.  When have you ever encouraged a living artist?  Or bought his best work?  Why are you all so ugly and so servile?  Here the servants are human beings.  They talk to one as if they were equals.  As far as I can tell there are no aristocrats.”

Perhaps it was the mention of aristocrats that reminded her of Richard Dalloway and Rachel, for she ran on with the same penful to describe her niece.

“It’s an odd fate that has put me in charge of a girl,” she wrote, “considering that I have never got on well with women, or had much to do with them.  However, I must retract some of the things that I have said against them.  If they were properly educated I don’t see why they shouldn’t be much the same as men—­as satisfactory I mean; though, of course, very different.  The question is, how should one educate them.  The present method seems to me abominable.  This girl, though twenty-four, had never heard that men desired women, and, until I explained it, did not know how children were born.  Her ignorance upon other matters as important” (here Mrs. Ambrose’s letter may not be quoted) . . . “was complete.  It seems to me not merely foolish but criminal to bring people up like that.  Let alone the suffering to them, it explains why women are what they are—­the wonder is they’re no worse.  I have taken it upon myself to enlighten her, and now, though still a good deal prejudiced and liable to exaggerate, she is more or less a reasonable human being.  Keeping them ignorant, of course, defeats its own object,