For the first time for over a year there was nobody for tea or dinner. Went to Markie but he was out. Waited, holding an excruciating conversation with his sisters till Arthur and Frieda rather rudely, it must be confessed, relieved me. I feel rather ashamed at being so rude as to have gone away, but I couldn’t help it, and off I went to the College Rd. The conversation at tea was on the Malahide murder, a disgraceful outrage in which six people were murdered by their family gardener, and the house burnt, and on the recent scandal about the Duke of Marlborough, a very bad thing for the church. I don’t know what it is, but it has reference to the Pope’s granting a dispensation to the Duke to marry a second time, his first marriage with Miss Vanderbilt, an American millionairess, being considered invalid. Anti-Catholics have spread about that the Pope gave the dispensation to induce Marlborough to become a Catholic, which he announced his intention of doing some months ago.
