"I was growing very near to the ridiculous delusion that thee no longer cared for me."

Alys quotes a passage from Walpole's description of his friend, Mr. Chute, and asks BR to ask Evelyn if it is not a fairly good description of BR.

"His impatience seemed to proceed from his vast sense, not from his temper: he saw everything so clearly and immediately, that he could not bear a momentary contradiction from folly or defective reasoning. Sudden contempt broke out, particularly on politics.... His truth, integrity, honour, spirit and abhorrence of all dirt, confirmed his contempt.... His possession of the quintessence of argument reduced it at once into axioms, and the clearness of his ideas struck out flashes of the brightest wit."

It is part of Walpole's description of his friend, Mr. Chute, after his death, Alys says. BR replied on May 11: "I think it is exactly like me."