Perhaps you suspect all this while that I am going too fast, and that I have taken a casual success for a regular victory. If so, you 're all wrong, my boy. She has struck her flag already, and acknowledged that your humble servant has effected a change in her sentiments that but a few short weeks before she would have pronounced impossible. The truth is, George, "the Tipperary tactics" that win battles in India are just as successful in love. Make no dispositions for a general engagement, never trouble your head about cavalry supports, reserves, or the like, but "just go in and win." It is a mighty short "General Order," and cannot possibly be misapprehended. The Countess herself has acknowledged to me, full half a dozen times within the last fortnight, that she was quite unprepared for such warfare. She expected, doubtless, that I 'd follow the old rubric, with opera-boxes, bouquets, _marrons glacés_, and so on, for a month or two. Nothing of the kind, George. I frankly told her that she was the most beautiful creature in Europe without knowing it. That it would be little short of a sacrilege she should pass her life in solitude and sorrow, and ten times worse than sacrilege to marry anything but an Irishman. That in all other countries the men are either money-getting, ambitious, or selfish, but that Paddy turns his whole thoughts towards fun and enjoyment. That Napier's Peninsular War and Moore's Melodies might be referred to for evidence of our national tastes; and, in short, such a people for fighting and making love was never recorded in history. She laughed at me for the whole of the first week, grew more serious the second, and now, within the last three days, instead of calling me "Monsieur le Sauvage," "Cosaque Anglais," and so on, she gravely asks my advice about everything, and never ventures on a step without my counsel and approbation. I have been candid with you hitherto, Tiverton, and so I must frankly own that, profiting by the adage that says "stratagem is equally legitimate in love as in war," I have indulged slightly in the strategy of mystification. For instance, I have represented the governor as a great don in his own country, with immense estates, and an ancient title, that he does not assume in consequence of some old act of attainder against the family. My mother I have made a princess in her own right; and here I am on safer ground, for, if called into court, she 'll sustain me in every assertion. Of my own self and prospects I have spoken meekly enough, merely hinting that I dislike diplomacy, and would rather live with the woman of my choice in some comparatively less distinguished station, upon a pittance of--say--three or four thousand a year!