University of Virginia Library

“Letitia, ma Chère Letitia:—After our sudden
parting last summer, so very provoking as it was, I

have been pining away in the Avenue. I am well
enough to be sure, and take a drive every day upon
Broadway with mamma; and the Count is civil and
attentive as usual, and the Spindles are as jealous
as ever (which is some comfort), yet somehow it
seems very dull. Papa has a terribly long face;
more than all, when I ask him for money. Mamma
says he is disturbed about his coal-stocks, and business,
and all that. What a horrid thing business
is! It made us come away from the Springs just
as a good set was forming about mamma; and
there's no hope, I fear, of getting it together again.
How is it, dear Letitia, that people will be very
kind, and chatty, and attentive at the Springs, and
then never come near you in town? I should love
to live at Saratoga, that is, provided the Count
and you, and the rest were there, and the set was
good.

“Those hateful Spindles are just as proud as
ever; although I am sure our house is better furnished
than theirs; and our box at the opera was
in twice as good a position. Never mind, as Brown
says, `our turn will come.'

“Really, my Letitia, I don't know what to tell
you about the Count. He is graceful and gentleman-like,
and says such agreeable things. And in
French, you've no idea, he is adorable! What a

nice thing to be a Countess: there's not the slightest
doubt about the title, for my French teacher has
seen it often, he says, in the foreign papers. How
it would spite the Spindles!

“But then papa—there's that horrid business
again—says he don't know about his property, and
don't know yet what his profession is; just as if a
Count could have a profession: how absurd!

“I think mamma would like it; and then the
éclat of it all! Do you ask me if I love him? My
Letitia, my heart knows not what to respond—ah,
mon pauvre cœur! I ask myself—indeed I do—
`Wilhelmina, dear one, is it the title, the distinction,
the grandeur; or is it the man, the heart, the disposition?
Could you live with him in a cot by the
water's side, with only a vegetable garden, and a
pure rill of running water? or is it the thought of
a claret coach, like mamma's, with a coronet on the
panel that would make the Spindles die of envy?'

“I know not what to say; sometimes I think it
is one, sometimes I think it is the other. Tell me,
dear Letitia, what you think it is?

“Another nice piece of news I have got for you:
Adolphe Quid, who you remember at the Springs,
is to be rich! What do you think of that? There
is no doubt of it: papa says so, and he rarely says
so of anybody. I think the old gentleman would

really encourage me to set snares for the millionaire.
Adolphe is very well: but only think of Mrs. Quid!
If he was only a Count!

“Yet one might do worse, I must confess: for
they say he is of good family: and he visits at the
Spindles. There's some foreign connection with his
name, and he speaks French adorably.

“He was very attentive a winter ago to a pretty
little country-cousin of ours, whom we introduced in
one or two quiet places; but she, sad thing, is
wretchedly poor, and I have just heard is to commence
country school-keeping. What reverses in
life, oh dear! Last winter visiting with mamma,
and now school-keeping!