“DEAR, DEAR PAPA: Your letter consoles and blesses me, but I almost regret mentioning my troubles to you. I _feel_ how they sink into your heart, and as I read I was filled with gratitude by the thought that you are still strong and hale and may live as long as I do, which I fervently desire. The very thought of losing you, is terrible. No one can ever understand me like my good, my precious, father. Your character is my ideal of all that is noble in manhood, and it was not wise, perhaps, for me to marry, because I must measure all men by your standard, and then be disappointed when they fall below it. I am unreasonable. I should never expect to find any one with your sense of justice, or with your delicate appreciation of everything fine in human motives. I could never deceive you: you see below the surface. I can deceive Albert, and do constantly, and hate myself for it. I can make him happy by wearing a smiling face when my heart is as heavy as lead. About a week ago we had an explanation. He confessed he had been wrong, had neglected my love, and we cried together, and _played_ that all our clouds had passed forever. I thought it was possible; but there is something false and forced about our re-established happiness, that mocks our once proud state like a beggar’s rags upon a king. Still, I am much happier. I try to dress more showily. Albert likes the lilies-of-the-field style of Ella. Think of your Clara’s pride! She enters the lists in a toilet display to regain the admiration of her husband. Is it not pitiful? “O papa, what am I saying? I meant to write you such a happy letter, but I fear the iron has entered my soul; yet I would not try, even for your sake, to deceive you, and believe me, I am suffering very little now, and I really think I shall recover my lost state. It is this hope that sustains me; but if I am disappointed, I shall rise above it and live. I am papa’s own girl, and more proud of being the daughter of such a man than I should be in being the queen of the grandest monarch that ever lived. If for no other reason than for your sake, I would bear up philosophically. “‘What matters it if I be loved or not? And what if he who works shall be forgot? The work of Love is no less surely wrought, And the great world shall answer me.’ “Are not those grand words? They have just come to the surface of my memory, like the artist’s negative under the developing solution. I mean to keep them before me henceforth, like the _mene tekel_ on Belshazzar’s wall. “Good-bye, dearest father, mine. I have written myself into a horrid mood. I have written to Susie, mamma, and others. Trust me, and believe in the good sense of “PAPA’S OWN GIRL. “P. S.—I _can_ write a letter without a _post scriptum_. You will bear me witness; but I must say just this: _do not be worried about me so long as I am silent_.