Mrs. Campbell, clutching the letter from him, and scanning it in a daze: "What! Oh, my goodness! It is! I have! Oh, I shall die! Run! Call her back! Shriek, Willis!" They rush to the window together. "No, no! It's too late! She's given it to their man, and now nothing can save me! Oh, Willis! Willis! Willis! This is all your fault, with that fatal suggestion of yours. Oh, if you had only left it to me I never should have got into such a scrape! She will think now that I've been trying to hoax her, and she's perfectly implacable at the least hint of a liberty, and she'll be ready to kill me. I don't know what she won't do. Oh, Willis, how could you get me into this!"
Campbell, irately: "Get you into this! Now, Amy, this is a little too much. You got yourself into it. You urged me to think of something—"
Mrs. Campbell: "Well, do, Willis, do think of something, or I shall go mad! Help me, Willis! Don't be so heartless—so unfeeling."
Campbell: "There's only one thing now, and that is to make a clean breast of it to Welling, and get him to help us out. A word from him can make everything right, and we can't take a step without him; we can't move!"
Mrs. Campbell: "I can't let you. Oh, isn't it horrible!"
Campbell: "Yes; a nice thing is always ten times nicer than you expected it to be!"
Mrs. Campbell: "Oh, how can you stand there mocking me? Why don't you go to him at once, and tell him the whole thing, and beg him, implore him, to help us?"
Campbell: "Why, you just told me I mustn't!"
Mrs. Campbell: "You didn't expect me to say you might, did you? Oh, how cruel!" She whirls out of the room, and Campbell stands in a daze, in which he is finally aware of Mr. Arthur Welling, seen through the open window, on the veranda without. Mr. Welling, with a terrified and furtive air, seems to be fixed to the spot where he stands.