ns; but
from that time suspense has coiled around me, hope has flared up,
blinked, and almost died out. I did not understand it then. It seemed to
me that fickleness was in the heart of the great Grand Duke.

But I did him a cruel injustice. If our two hearts and destinies are
severed, it has been by the underground machinations of this
Administration. General Grant saw what was going on, and has cruelly
circumvented two young and unsophisticated hearts that were knitting
together, like ivy round an oak sapling.

I am determined on it. The country shall hear of my wrongs. Sprucehill
shall have redress for the insult put upon her favorite daughter. In all
that General Grant has done in the way of omission, nothing approaches
the inactivity which has wrung my heart, as wet blankets are twisted in
the strong hands of a washerwoman.

_He_ has not written me a line. His letters must have been interrupted.
Evil machinations have been at work. The Government detectives are
everywhere scattering slanders and distrust. I shouldn't wonder a bit if
they have been to our old homestead on Sprucehill, mousing among church
registers, and interviewing family physicians. Well, let them. Since I
learned to write, some figures have been changed in the old Family
Bible, and, thank goodness! old Doctor Perry is dead. The keenest
detective won't find much difference between 1830 and 1850. It only
requires that the curve of the three should be rubbed out, and a dash
sharpened to a point added. If they look for eighteen hundred and thirty
there, I can tell them it isn't to be found. Let them search--that's
all!

This was my state of mind three days ago. Now I am revivified with extra
animation. Hope has perched on my white hat and sits there waving its
feather like a pennant.

I am glad from the bottom of my heart that I didn't follow the duke
across the ocean. After all a duke is only a man, hard to catch and
expensive to cage. Why should we trouble ourselves about princes and
dukes and lords, when we have the most genuine of all manly articles
right under our feet. Dukes are scarce and hard to scare up, but there
are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. That's my motto
to-day.

LXXXIX.

DONE UP IN A HURRY.

Sisters:--the atmosphere of Long Branch is propitious, not to say
exhilarating, for close by this half-mile of a hotel is another, crowded
full at this time of the year, in which we can hear fiddling and danc