She has fairly hypnotised Ruth. My little sister thinks there is no one like her. As soon as Edith married Alec, she took complete possession of Ruth, provided her with a lot of lovely clothes and sent her off, for the first winter, to a fashionable boarding-school in New York. After eight dazzling months of that sort of life she ordained that Ruth should return to Hilton and "come out." Last fall she gave her a reception that fairly thrilled the town. Edith's word is sacred law to Ruth; Edith's opinion the ultimatum to any doubt on any question whatsoever. _I_ am a mere speck on Ruth's outlook on life; _my_ ideas don't count; I am so old-fashioned and so easily shocked; I don't know what style is; I don't possess a scrap of what Edith calls social-sense. Perhaps as much as anything else it is Edith's complete possession of Ruth that hurts me. It seems a shame that she couldn't have been satisfied with Alec. I don't see why she had to rob me of my only sister too. I don't cry about it (I won't let myself) but I think I've missed my own mother more since I was twenty than before I was ten. It may be a comfort to mothers whose little children have grown out of the helpless age to know this from a grown-up daughter. I don't know what to say to you about my brother Alec. I wonder sometimes what has become of him. I see him, I hear him speak, I reply, but I might as well be gazing at his picture and talking with him over the long distance 'phone. I have no idea what he thinks about this new life of ours. He doesn't confide in me any more; we are almost strangers now. Of course I should expect him to be loyal to his wife--he's such a thoughtful man that he wouldn't hurt Edith's feelings for anything--but I wonder and wonder where all his old qualities have gone. Alec used to be so firm and determined, so frugal and economical. Are those qualities still smouldering away down deep in him somewhere, or when Edith took possession of his house, did she take possession of his soul too, and sweep out everything she didn't like, just as she cut off the cupola and sold the iron fence? Some men let women do that with them, especially if it's a woman they've wanted terribly for a dozen years, and never thought themselves good enough for her to accept. Why, Alec simply wants to please Edith and her family in every human way that he can. I have an idea that he feels so grateful to Edith for accepting him, and to Mr. Campbell for saving the business, that he doesn't dare disagree with a single solitary thing the Campbells ever do or think or suggest. I believe my brother is so overcome by living in such continual grandeur, sleeping in a bed with gold trimmings--Napoleonic, Edith says--bathing in a bathroom with Florentine tiles, entertaining all the big bugs within a hundred miles, and travelling to the office every morning in a limousine, that he feels that he must have been a mere worm when Edith picked him up. _I_