Campbell: "Well, well, Amy! This is a pretty good joke on you. You've sealed up one of your own notes, and sent it to Miss Rice. Capital! Ah, ha, ha!" Mrs. Campbell, with hysterical rapture: "Oh, how delicious! What a ridiculous blunder! I don't wonder you were puzzled, Margaret." Welling: "What! Sent her your own letter, addressed to yourself?" Mrs. Campbell: "Yes. Isn't it amusing?" Welling: "The best thing I ever heard of." Miss Rice: "Yes. And if you only knew what agonies of curiosity Miss Greenway and I had suffered, wanting to open it and read it anyway, in spite of all the decencies, I think you would read it to us." Campbell: "Or at least give Miss Rice her own letter. What in the world did you do with that?" Mrs. Campbell: "Put it in my desk, where I thought I put mine. But never mind it now. I can tell you what was in it just as well. Come in here a moment, Margaret." She leads the way to the parlor, whither Miss Rice follows. Miss Greenway, poutingly: "Oh, mayn't I know, too? I think that's hardly fair, Mrs. Campbell." Mrs. Campbell: "No; or--Margaret may tell you afterwards; or Mr. Welling may, _now_!" Miss Greenway: "How very formidable!" Mrs. Campbell, over her shoulder, on going out: "Willis, bring me the refusals and acceptances, won't you? They're up-stairs." Campbell: "Delighted to be of any service." Behind Miss Greenway's back he dramatizes over her head to Welling his sense of his own escape, and his compassion for the fellow-man whom he leaves in the toils of fate. IX _MISS GREENWAY; MR. WELLING_ Welling: "Nelly!" He approaches, and timidly takes her hand. Miss Greenway: "Arthur! That letter was addressed in your handwriting. Will you please explain?" Welling: "Why, it's very simple--that is, it's the most difficult thing in the world. Nelly, can you believe _any_thing I say to you?" Miss Greenway: "What nonsense! Of course I can--if you're not too long about it." Welling: "Well, then, the letter in that envelope was one I wrote to Mrs. Campbell--or the copy of one." Miss Greenway: "The copy?" Welling: "But let me explain. You see, when I got your note asking me to be sure and come to Mrs. Curwen's--" Miss Greenway: "Yes?" Welling: "--I had just received an invitation from Mrs. Campbell for her garden-party, and I sat down and wrote to you, and concluded I'd step over and tell her why I couldn't come, and with that in mind I addressed your letter--the one I'd written you--to her." Miss Greenway: "With my name inside?" Welling: "No; I merely called you 'darling'; and when Mrs. Campbell opened it she saw it couldn't be for her, and she took it into her head it must be for Miss Rice." Miss Greenway: "For Margaret? What an idea! But why did she put your envelope on it?" Welling: "She made a copy, for the joke of it; and then, in her hurry, she enclosed that in my envelope, and kept the original and the envelope she'd addressed to Miss Rice, and--and that's all."