“So you were shocked at the letter?”
“Yes, mortally; and yet I had nearly burned the enclosed note.”
“Oh! then the whole joke would have missed fire.”
“What joke?”
“You would have believed to the end that I had really betrayed you. Let me take this opportunity to make you a confession, that I did in an hour of delirium—it was after the dinner at your father’s at which I sat next to Tilling, and it was because I had drunk too much champagne—that I did then, so to say, offer him my heart on a salver.”
“And he?”
“And he answered me very much to the purpose, that he loved you above all other things and was firmly resolved to remain true to you to death. The whole joke was contrived to teach you to prize this phenomenon better.”
“What is this joke that you keep talking of?”
“Why, you must know, inasmuch as the letter and the envelope come from me.”
“From you? I know nothing about it.”