"I went to you entertaining a very different idea of you, and very different sentiments from the opinion which I took away with me. I admit that my call on you was not made with any agreeable anticipations; but I was determined to see you and learn for myself what manner of woman had so disturbed us all. "In justice to you--in grateful recognition of your tact and gentleness, I am venturing to express to you now my very thorough respect for you, my sense of deep obligation, and my sympathy--which I am afraid you may not care for. "That it would not be suitable for a marriage to take place between my brother and yourself is, it appears, as evident to you as it is to his own family. Yet, will you permit me to wish that it were otherwise? I do wish it; I wish that the circumstances had made such a marriage possible. I say this to you in spite of the fact that we have always expected my brother to marry into a family which has been intimate with our own family for many generations. It is a tribute to your character which I am unwilling to suppress; which I believe I owe to you, to say that, had circumstances been different, you might have been made welcome among us. "The circumstances of which I speak are of an importance to us, perhaps exaggerated, possibly out of proportion to the fundamental conditions of the situation. But they are conditions which our family has never ignored. And it is too late for us to learn to ignore them now. "I think that you will feel--I think that a large part of the world might consider our attitude toward such a woman as you have shown yourself to be, narrow, prejudiced, provincial. The modern world would scarcely arm us with any warrant for interfering in a matter which a man nearly thirty is supposed to be able to manage for himself. But my father and mother are old, and they will never change in their beliefs and prejudices inherited from their parents, who, in turn, inherited their beliefs. "It was for them more than for myself--more even than for my brother--that I appealed to you. The latter end of their lives should not be made unhappy. And your generous decision assures me that it will not be made so. "As for myself, my marriage permitted me an early enfranchisement from the obsolete conventional limits within which my brother and I were brought up. "I understand enough of the modern world not to clash with, it unnecessarily, enough of ultra-modernity not to be too much afraid of it. "But even I, while I might theoretically admit and even admire that cheerful and fearless courage which makes it possible for such a self-respecting woman as yourself to face the world and force it to recognise her right to earn her own living as she chooses--I could not bring myself to contemplate with equanimity my brother's marrying you. And I do not believe my father would survive such an event.