Her descriptions were so powerful and graphic that they quite surprised me.

She made me feel as though I were walking through the fir woods beside her, or standing on the sea-shore watching the white-crested waves rolling in and breaking into foam at our feet.

A sort of dewy freshness seemed to stamp the pages.

Gladys loved nature with all her heart; she revelled in the solemn grandeur of those woods, in the breadth and freedom of the ocean; it seemed to harmonise with her varying moods.
'I feel a different creature already,' she wrote when she had been away a fortnight.

'Without owning myself happy (but happiness, active or negative, will never come to me again), still I am calmer and more at peace,--away from the oppressive influences that surrounded me at home.
'I have made up my mind that the atmosphere of Gladwyn is fatal to my soul's health.