"That Erastus has ever _cared_, or cares now in the least, for her, save as a plaything, I will _never_ believe. But Père Michaux is like a _mule_ for stubbornness, as you know, and I fear he will marry them in _any_ case. He did not seem to think of _you_ at all, and when I said, 'Anne will _die_ of grief!' he only smiled--yes, _smiled_--and Frenchly shrugged his shoulders! My poor child, I have but little hope, because if he appeals to Erastus's _honor_, what can the boy do? He is the soul of honor. "I can hardly write, my brain has been so overturned. To think that _Tita_ should have outwitted us all at her age, and gained her point over everything, over you and over Rast--poor, poor Rast, who will be so _miserably_ sacrificed! I will write again to-morrow; but if Père Michaux carries out his strange _Jesuitical_ design, you will hear from him probably before you can hear again from me. Bear up, my dearest Anne. I acknowledge that, so far, I have found it difficult to see the Divine purpose in this, unless indeed it be to inform us that we are all but cinders and ashes; which, however, I for one have long known." Mrs. Bryden's letter: "DEAR ANNE,--I feel drawn toward you more closely since the illness and death of our dear Dr. Gaston, who loved you so tenderly, and talked so much of you during his last days with us. It is but a short time since I wrote to you, giving some of the messages he left, and telling of his peaceful departure; but now I feel that I must write again upon a subject which is painful, yet one upon which you should have, I think, all the correct details immediately. Miss Hinsdale is no doubt writing to you also; but she does not know all. She has not perceived, as we have, the gradual approaches to this catastrophe--I can call it by no other name. "When you went away, your half-sister was a child. With what has seemed lightning rapidity she has grown to womanhood, and for months it has been plainly evident that she was striving in every way to gain and hold the attention of Erastus Pronando. He lingered here almost all summer, as you will remember; Tita followed him everywhere. Miss Hinsdale, absorbed in the cares of housekeeping, knew nothing of it; but daily, on one pretext or another, they were together. Whether Erastus was interested I have no means of knowing; but that Tita is now extremely pretty in a certain style, and that she was absorbed in him, we could all see. It was not our affair; yet we might have felt called upon to make it ours if it had not been for Père Michaux. He was her constant guardian.