"I? Why, you said you knew all about it! Don't you know that she wrote it?" "The forward minx!" "I thought you said you had forgiven her?" "I wish I hadn't! The idea of a girl as careful as Fenie Wardlow professes to be----" "My dear girl, you've been dreadfully misinformed in some way. Fenie didn't write the letter; 'twas her sister." "Jermyn!" exclaimed Kate, utterly aghast. What was the world coming to? She had heard of married women who pretended to adore their husbands, and who intrigued with other men, but she supposed they were far from the society in which she moved. So it was Trif and her--carelessness, call it, over which Fenie had been so uncomfortable when Kate called, a few hours back! Oh, the wickedness of the world! Whom now was there to trust? "So," said Kate, slowly and coldly, "it was a married woman, one whom I have respected and loved, who wrote you the letter which----" "Stop, Kate--at once. There is a dreadful mistake somewhere. Let us be entirely frank with each other, for the good of all concerned. The only letter about which I have had any discomfort is one which Mrs. Highwood wrote to her own husband." "Her own husband!" echoed Kate, with a blank stare. "Yes. Let us begin at the beginning, and get your mind out of this dreadful tangle. Do tell me from whom, and how, you got your information about that unspeakably troublesome letter?" "From Trixy," answered Kate, feebly; at which Jermyn laughed heartily before he replied: "I might have imagined it. The little marplot! Now listen: the letter is one which Mrs. Highwood wrote her husband, from Old Point, on two subjects, one of which was very delightful, for it was you; I was the other. By an accident, which I will explain later, the letter fell into the Admiral's hands, and he, not distinguishing it from several others which he took from his pocket an hour or two afterward, made a sketch upon the back of it; I, who chanced to be with him, made another. Both sketches are now needed, at once, to perfect some business arrangements in which the Admiral and I are greatly interested and by which we might profit greatly, but Highwood, to whom his wife sent the letter when she regained it, has mislaid the sheet, or the two parts of it, and the Admiral and I, as well as the entire Highwood family, are greatly troubled about it." "So is Harry and Fenie," said Kate, as if talking to herself. "What an idiot I have been! How they will laugh at my expense! But oh, I am so happy, although I don't deserve to be, for I have been jealous, suspicious, hateful----" "Do restrain yourself, my dear girl." "I've also been meddlesome," Kate continued, "and impertinent, and, worse than all, inexpressibly stupid, on account of that dreadful letter. Meanwhile, I am being heartless, for you said the loss of the letter was making trouble for you and the Admiral. How much is the trouble--to you?" "Oh, merely fifty thousand dollars worth."