aged to dispose of all but a mere pittance of her
fortune, and humiliated her in a thousand ways besides. His only decent
act was to die and leave her undisturbed for the remainder of her life.
Your uncle assisted in her support and saved the remnant of her
property, so that she has, by careful and rigorous economy, been able to
educate you and Elise, and keep up a respectable appearance in a quiet
way.

Of course it was impossible to retain her place among the associates of
her better days, and you know how bitter this fact has always made
Elise. Your sister has the physical beauty and the overwhelming love of
money and power which characterized your father. She has a modicum of
your mother's sense of honour, but has been reared in a way not
calculated to develop much strength of character. Your mother has been a
slave to your sister. Elise is incapable of a deep, intense love for any
man, and your mother's pessimistic ideas of love and marriage have still
further acted upon her brain cells and atrophied whatever impulses may
have been latent in her nature, to love and be loved. These qualities
might have been developed had Elise been under the tutelage of some one
versed in the science of brain building, but your mother, like most
mothers, was not aware of the tremendous possibilities within her grasp,
or of the effect of the ideas she expressed in the hearing of her
children. Neither did she seem to recognize the father's traits in
Elise, and undertake the work of eliminating them, as she might have
done. She has been an unselfish and devoted mother, and has made too
many sacrifices for Elise. At the same time, she has awakened the mind
of your sister to ideals of principle and honour which will help her to
be a better woman than her inheritance from your father would otherwise
permit. But now, at the age of twenty-one, it is impossible to hope that
she will develop into a self-sacrificing, loving, womanly woman, whose
happiness can be found in a peaceful domestic life. She has seen your
mother sad and despondent, under the yoke of genteel poverty, and heard
her bemoan her lost privileges of wealth and station. This, added to her
natural craving for money and place, renders a wealthy marriage her only
hope of happiness on earth.

Mr. Volney has an enormous fortune. He is, as you say, a senile old man
in his dotage. As you say again, such a marriage is a travesty. But
Elise is incapable of feeling the love which alon