ling of yours. Did you put on R.S.V.P.?"

Mrs. Campbell: "Yes; and just a printed card like all the rest. I did
want to write him a note in the first person, and urge him to come,
because I expected Miss Rice and Miss Greenway to help me receive; but
when I found Margaret had promised Mrs. Curwen for the next day, I knew
she wouldn't like to take the bloom off that by helping me first; so I
didn't."

Campbell: "Didn't what?"

Mrs. Campbell: "Write to him. I just sent a card."

Campbell: "Then these passionate expressions _are_ unprovoked, and my
duty is clear. I must lose no time in destroying Mr. Welling. Do you
happen to know where I laid my revolver?"

Mrs. Campbell: "Oh, Willis, what are you going to do? You see it's a
mistake."

Campbell: "Mr. Welling has got to prove that. I'm not going to have
young men addressing my wife as Oh their darling, without knowing the
reason why. It's a liberty."

Mrs. Campbell, inclined to laugh: "Ah, Willis, how funny you are!"

Campbell: "Funny? I'm furious."

Mrs. Campbell: "You know you're not. Give me the letter, dearest. I know
it's for Margaret Rice, and I shall see her, and just feel round and
find out if it isn't so, and--"

Campbell: "What an idea! You haven't the slightest evidence that it's
for Miss Rice, or that it isn't intended for you, and it's my duty to
find out. And nobody is authority but Mr. Welling. And I'm going to him
with the _corpus delicti_."

Mrs. Campbell: "But how can you? Remember how sensitive, how shrinking
he is. Don't, Willis; you mustn't. It will kill him!"

Campbell: "Well, that may save me considerable bother. If he will simply
die of himself, I can't ask anything better." He goes on eating his
breakfast.

Mrs. Campbell, admiring him across the table: "Oh, Willis, how perfectly
delightful you are!"

Campbell: "I know; but why?"

Mrs. Campbell: "Why, taking it in the nice, sensible way you do. Now,
some husbands would be so stupid! Of course you _couldn't_ think--you
couldn't _dream_--that the letter was really for me; and yet you might
behave very disagreeably, and make me very unhappy, if you were not just
the lovely, kind-hearted, magnanimous--"

Campbell, looking up from his coffee: "Oh, hello!"

Mrs. Campbell: "Yes; that is what took my fancy in you, Willis: that
generosity, that real gentleness, in spite of the brusque way you have.
Refinement of the heart, _I_ call it."

Campbell: "Amy, what are you after?"

Mrs. Ca