“Mr. Goldsborough talked of prosecuting Vittorio in a criminal court for stealing an heiress and minor. But Alberta calmly assured her father that in doing so he would only be degrading his future son-in-law, and by consequence his only daughter, for that she was resolved to give her hand to Vittorio upon the very first opportunity after she should become of age. “Whether or not this announcement influenced Mr. Goldsborough’s conduct I do not know; it is certain, however, that he did not prosecute Signior Vittorio; but he brought Alberta here, and placed her as a parlor boarder in the Convent of the Visitation, where, behind grates and bars, she is secure from a second escapade. “Mr. Goldsborough did not call on us until he had left his daughter in the convent, and then he only stayed long enough to tell us these facts before he left for Richmond. I called at the convent to see Alberta, but was refused a sight of her. She is, in truth, no less than an honorable prisoner there. “And that is not all the trouble in Henrico County. I have a letter from Elfrida Fielding, in which she tells me all her secrets with the utmost candor, requesting me also to tell you, whom she supposes to be somewhere in our reach. “Now, who would have thought that wild little monkey, Elfie, would have acted, in similar circumstances, with so much more prudence and good sense and good feeling than has been displayed by our model young lady? Yet so it was. “Elfie has had a proposal from—whom do you think?—young Mr. Albert Goldsborough, who was intended for his cousin; but as she ran away with the flute-playing Italian, of course he could not be considered bound to her; so he followed the bent of his inclinations, and offered his hand to Elfie Fielding. “The proposal was in every point of view a most eligible one for Elfie, and much better, she says, than she had any reason to expect. The young suitor was handsome, amiable, intelligent, and possessed a large fortune, and last and most, he had the favor of his intended—but—he differed in politics with Elfie’s ‘pap and two unks.’ “Now you know what it is to differ in politics in these days—you have read how gray-haired Senators take each other by the throat in the Senate Chamber. You have seen how it sets father against son, and mother against daughter; how it parts lovers and divides families; pray Heaven it may not some day come nigh to divide the Union! “Elfie’s ‘pap and two unks’ are enlightened, far-seeing and progressive men. Elfie’s lover is a conservative, and believes in the eternal stability of ‘institutions’ and the infallibility of the powers that be, etc. Elfie’s lover, had he lived in the first year of the Christian era in Judea, would have been a Jew, and helped to crucify Christ. Had he lived in England at the time of the civil wars, he would have been a royalist. Or had his presence enriched the earth at the time of our own Revolution, he would have been a Tory.