I must call it, or at least may, for want of a better word. I think it of superior force that they, the others, all except my young heroine, shall begin on _their_ side the betrayal of malaise, which Ralph is then affected by; rather than that he should begin it, making it thus that they are by the operation, the outward betrayal, of that condition of his own. Here I have the action of the little H.W., who, moved thereto (I express myself thus roughly) by the situation determined for his own interest through the terms appearing destined to develop between R. and the girl, and this though R. isn't at all free for the girl, opens himself on the subject to the three others and so calls their attention to certain things that they before long find themselves, and confess it to him and to each other, affected too in the sense he communicates. To be perfectly definite it seems to me I must have it that the marriage of Ralph and the elder daughter is definitely arranged and fixed for a tolerably near date; since I want the elder girl, "under the effect," to break off something, and there is nothing so good for her to break off as their engagement. The rupture of that, with R's apprehension of how and why it is coming and has come, is of course a silver nail of perfect salience; just as it is another, I see, that this catastrophe, or whatever one may call it, places Ralph and the younger girl face to face as they have not yet been placed. Their recognition of that, his at least, which is also a perception and a comprehension of hers, what has _this_, in its concreteness, but one more silver nail? What I see myself, at the same time, here concerned with is the question of the outward footing Ralph remains on, finds or makes possible, with the two other women etc. when the rupture developes and after it has occurred. I can't have it end the relation, everything so collapsing--so that there must be still grounds for the relation, and they must be strong and positive, or at least definite and presentable. I get something by the provision that the engagement has not been given out nor the marriage announced as to take place; which, meanwhile, is not at all natural unless some advantage not to be too lightly sacrificed is involved with their still superficially keeping on. This requires thinking of, but doesn't in the least defy handling; and indeed I think I get it at a stroke by the fact that they all cling to him, in a sort, even in spite of the malaise, by reason of the convenience proceeding from his means. Decidedly, yes, they must be, through disorders, extravagances, turpitudes or whatever, of the late head of the family, and vraisemblablement through like actualities on the part of the son who has succeeded him in the proprietorship of Drydown, they must be on a hollow and quaking pecuniary basis--which makes Ralph have to have money, even though this wasn't in the least a _common_ felicity or luxury in the American world of that period.