"DEAR ANNE,--It is not often that I speak so bluntly as I shall speak now. In marrying, this morning, your half-sister Angélique to Erastus Pronando I feel that I have done you a great service. You did not love him with the real love of a nature like yours--the love that will certainly come to you some day; perhaps has already come. I have always known this, and, in accordance with it, did all I could to prevent the engagement originally. I failed; but this day's work has made up for the failure. "Angélique has grown into a woman. She is also very beautiful, after a peculiar fashion of her own. All the strength of her nature, such as it is, is concentrated upon the young man who is now her husband. From childhood she has loved him; she was bitterly jealous of you even before you went away. I have been aware of this, but until lately I was not sure of Rast. Her increasing beauty, however, added to her intense absorbed interest in him, has conquered. Seeing this, I have watched with satisfaction the events of the past summer, and have even assisted somewhat (and with a clear conscience) in their development. "Erastus, even if you had loved him, Anne, could not have made you happy. And neither would you have made him happy; for he is quick-witted, and he would have inevitably, and in spite of all your tender humility, my child, discovered your intellectual superiority, and in time would have angrily resented it. For he is vain; his nature is light; he needs adulation in order to feel contented. On the other hand, he is kind-hearted and affectionate, and to Tita will be a demi-god always. The faults that would have been death to you, she will never see. She is therefore the fit wife for him.