I have been, and am, much concerned about you. I gather from his letters that Colonel Ogilvie has been much disappointed at not having heard from you. And I want, if you will allow me to take the liberty, to speak to you seriously about it. You will give me this privilege I know--if only for the fact that I am an old maid; for the same Powers that made me an old maid have made me an old woman, and such is entitled, I take it, to forbearance, if not to respect. You should--you really should be more considerate towards Colonel Ogilvie. He is an old man--much older than you perhaps think, for he bears himself as proudly as in his younger days. But the claim on you is not merely from his years; that claim must appeal to all. From you there is one more imperative still, one which is personal and paramount: he is under so very deep an obligation to you. A matter which from another would pass unconsidered as an act of thoughtfulness must now, when it is due to you, seem to him like a studied affront. I put it this way because I know you are a man of noble nature, and that generosity is to such even a stronger urge than duty--if such a thing be possible. In certain matters he is sensitive beyond belief. Even to a degree marked in a place where men still hold that their lives rest behind every word and deed, every thought or neglect towards another. I have some hesitation in mentioning this lest you should think I am summoning Fear to the side of Duty. But you are above such a misunderstanding, I am sure. Oh my dear friend do think of some of the rest of us. You have saved the life of our darling Joy--the one creature in whom all our loves are centred. Naturally we all want to see you again--to make much of you--to show you in our own poor way how deeply we hold you in our hearts. But if Colonel Ogilvie thinks himself insulted--that is how he regards any neglect however trivial--he acts on that belief, and there is no possible holding him back. He looks on it as a sacred duty to avenge affront. You must not blame him for it. In your peaceful English life you have I think no parallel to the ungovernable waves of passion that rage in the hearts of Kentuckians when they consider their honour is touched. Ah! we poor women know it who have to suffer in silence and wait and wait, and wait; and when the worst is made known to us, to seal up the founts of our grief and pretend that we too agree with the avenging of wrong. For it is our life to be silent in men’s quarrels. We are not given a part--any part. We are not supposed to even look on. It is another world from ours, and we have to accept it so. Please God may you never know what it is to be in or on the fringe of a Feud. Well I know its dread, its horror! My own life that years ago was as bright and promising as any young life can be; when the Love that had dawned on my girlhood rose and beat with noonday heat on my young-womanhood made it seem as if heaven had come down to earth.