Notably, Adam has gone mad after Helen, his daughter and George's wife, ran off with another man, Harley.
Parson Hawthorne laments that a man who he had recently begun to promote turned out to have cuckolded a parishioner the previous night.
After all have departed, with the exception of Adam, Helen and Harley return, apparently from Italy, bedraggled and malnourished.
Because this is what he wishes, Mary consents, and decides to marry Vernon the following day- even though she is secretly in love with George.
The letter discloses that George took the blame for an act of financial fraud that Mary's father had committed.
He tells the partygoers that Helen and Harley have died, and confesses that the former was always in love with the latter, but was forbidden by her father to marry him due to his lack of wealth.