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.