_Roberts_: “You’re nervous, doctor. It’s nothing. However, it’s easy enough to go out and see.” He goes out to the door of the apartment, and immediately returns. He beckons to _Dr. Lawton_ and _Mr. Bemis_, with a mysterious whisper: “Come here both of you. Don’t alarm the ladies.” II. In the interior of the elevator are seated _Mrs. Roberts’s Aunt Mary_ (_Mrs. Crashaw_), _Mrs. Curwen_, and _Miss Lawton_; _Mr. Miller_ and _Mr. Alfred Bemis_ are standing with their hats in their hands. They are in dinner costume, with their overcoats on their arms, and the ladies’ draperies and ribbons show from under their outer wraps, where they are caught up, and held with that caution which characterizes ladies in sitting attitudes which they have not been able to choose deliberately. As they talk together, the elevator rises very slowly, and they continue talking for some time before they observe that it has stopped. _Mrs. Crashaw_: “It’s very fortunate that we are all here together. I ought to have been here half an hour ago, but I was kept at home by an accident to my finery, and before I could be put in repair I heard it striking the quarter past. I don’t know what my niece will say to me. I hope you good people will all stand by me if she should be violent.” _Miller_: “In what a poor man may with his wife’s fan, you shall command me, Mrs. Crashaw.” He takes the fan out, and unfurls it. _Mrs. Crashaw_: “Did she send you back for it?” _Miller_: “I shouldn’t have had the pleasure of arriving with you if she hadn’t.” _Mrs. Crashaw_, laughing, to _Mrs. Curwen_: “What did you send _yours_ back for, my dear?” _Mrs. Curwen_, thrusting out one hand gloved, and the other ungloved: “I didn’t want two rights.” _Young Mr. Bemis_: “Not even women’s rights?” _Mrs. Curwen_: “Oh, so young and so depraved! Are all the young men in Florence so bad?” Surveying her extended arms, which she turns over: “I don’t know that I need have sent him for the other glove. I could have explained to Mrs. Roberts. Perhaps she would have forgiven my coming in one glove.” _Miller_, looking down at the pretty arms: “If she had seen you without.” _Mrs. Curwen_: “Oh, you were looking!” She rapidly involves her arms in her wrap. Then she suddenly unwraps them, and regards them thoughtfully. “What if he should bring a ten-button instead of an eight! And he’s quite capable of doing it.” _Miller_: “Are there such things as ten-button gloves?” _Mrs. Curwen_: “You would think there were ten-thousand button gloves if you had them to button.” _Miller_: “It would depend upon whom I had to button them for.” _Mrs. Curwen_: “For Mrs. Miller, for example.” _Mrs. Crashaw_: “We women are too bad, always sending people back for something. It’s well the men don’t know _how_ bad.”