ale with suspense--for you know the great Grand Duke,
though courteous and devotional, did not speak out in a perfectly
satisfactory manner. I knew he meant it; for no robin's nest in laying
time was ever so full of warm and brooding love as those blue eyes of
his. But a cruel fate took him hence before the thrilling word was
spoken, and left me trembling with doubt, pining in loneliness.

I know the reason of this now; there is not a doubt that he has been
anxious, like myself, but imperial royalty has its impediments. My
Prince must bow to the exactions of a lofty station. I took up a paper
the other day, and read something that made the heart leap in my bosom
as a trout jumps after a fly. The Emperor has heard of the great Grand
Duke's admiration. All Russia has heard of it and me. It is even
reported that he has married a lovely and talented female, without
waiting for the Emperor to say yes or no. The description answers, you
will perceive. I felt myself blush, like a rose in the sunset, when I
read it. "Lovely and talented." Sisters, there can be no doubt about it!

I felt my cheeks burn and my heart broaden with a sense of coming
exaltation. Why should the Emperor refuse? Are we not all queens in this
country, and is not a woman of genius an empress among queens?

I'm afraid the Emperor of all the Russias does not yet comprehend the
great social system of our country, where the fact of being a woman has
infinite nobility in itself--to which peculiar privileges are attached;
for instance, the privilege of carrying pistols and shooting down men in
hallways and street cars in a promiscuous fashion.

As I have said--to be a woman in America is to be everything. That is
why I think it unreasonable that Imperial nobility should be forbidden
to match itself here. Once we had aristocracy of money, but since the
war, when people became rich in no time by selling shoddy and things,
that has levelled down like a sand heap. But one aristocracy is left
now, and that is the aristocracy of mind. Genius is the nobility of the
mind. Now as long as the Prince unites himself with that, what has any
one, even his august father, to say against it?

But there is no doubt I have given the Imperial heart some anxiety.
_His_ manner was so impressive; his spy-glass was levelled at my
countenance so often, that it is not to be wondered at if the violence
of his passionate admiration did get about and fly on the wings of the
wind to his