"It ought to be a girl with a temperament that is at once a match and foil for his own. She should have a sense of humor, a gift for light and ironic speech that can stir him without irritating him, because he is perhaps of a cautious disposition, and hence would be well matched with one a little bit impulsive, each exercising the proper influence upon the other. She should be strong, too, habituated to physical hardship, as our Western girls are. Such a marriage, I think, would be ideal, and I expect you, Mr. Plummer, when you rejoin us, to help me make it, should the opportunity arise.
Yours sincerely,
"Anna Grayson."
She folded the sheets, put them in the envelope, and addressed them. It was the second time that she had written to Mr. Plummer, but with a very different motive, and she had more confidence in the second letter than she had ever felt in the first.
"That will cause him pain," she reflected, "but the task cannot be done without it."
In her heart she was genuinely sorry for Mr. Plummer, thinking at that moment more of his grief than of her husband's risk, but she was resolute to mail the letter, nevertheless. She read it a little later to Mr. Grayson, and he approved.
"It is likely to bring 'King' Plummer raging down from Idaho, but it ought to go," he said.
A half-hour later, this letter, written in a delicate, feminine hand, but heavy with fate, was speeding northwestward.