The other letter was from his sister.

She scolded him for her business being still unsettled.

"Well, we must sell it at five and a half if we can't get more," Levin decided the first question, which had always before seemed such a weighty one, with extraordinary facility on the spot.

"It's extraordinary how all one's time is taken up here," he thought, considering the second letter.

He felt himself to blame for not having got done what his sister had asked him to do for her.