Whitney has treated me shamefully, shamefully! Here I am all by myself,
and I don't know what to do.
Ah, well, I must play my own hand. She shall regret this night's work, if
I marry rank or money.
It is so strange how every one prospers except poor, baffled, loveless me,
who have the greatest gift of all. I wonder if it is really Nature's law
that the very beautiful must suffer; if this is her way of equalizing the
lot of the poor and plain and lowly; her law of compensation to make the
splendid creatures walk lonely and in sorrow all their days while plain
ones coo and are happy. Was Uncle Tim right about the little brown
partridges?
If I were superstitious or easily disheartened, I should say--but I am
neither! I shall succeed. I will take my place by right of beauty or die
fighting! If I see Lord Strathay again, he shall marry me within a week.
They shall call it "one of those romantic weddings."
I can't live here alone. I have nothing to fall back upon; nothing but a
father who doesn't answer my letters, and Judge Baker who lectures me in
polysyllables, and John Burke--poor old John; what a good fellow he is!--
who simply loves me; and Mrs.
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