"I wrote."
"Never."
"Margaret!" he cried indignantly. "I wrote and had your answer. Are you dreaming?"
"You never wrote. In my life I never wrote to you."
"Good heavens! When I have your letter in my pocket! I wrote to you asking if I might come back as your accepted lover, and you sent me this in return," said he, giving her the paper for which he had searched his pocket-book.
She took it and looked it over. When she gave it back her glance was fixed far away over the miraculous river that ran with mimic waterfalls through the gardens, and she was ghastly pale.
"I did not write that," she said. "You ought to have known it."
"It is your signature and your hand."
"It is like my hand. I never signed myself M. Mildmay. How could I, when we were all M. Mildmay?"
A light broke in upon him. They were all M. Mildmay, of course, and he remembered a long-forgotten feud with Miriam. He bit his lip and stamped his foot angrily. What a fool he had been!