And after that remark there were many very long explanations that made a beginning about the crooked back of the wee Pierre, which, in a letter come to my Uncle, the General Robert, that day, was declared by that great Doctor Burns to be of a certainty straight within the year, and that ended in the library where my Uncle, the General Robert, and my Gouverneur Faulkner, with good Buzz, read and read yet again the papers that my great Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, had signed for an honest delivery of the many mules to France.  I do not know all that my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner said to my Uncle, the General Robert, for I remained in the hall with my Sue in a discussion about the telling without offense of the departure of Robert Carruthers to my Belle and other loved ones.  And to us soon returned my Buzz of great curiosity.

“There is no humbleness that I will not perform for their forgiveness, my Buzz and my Sue,” I said to them.  “Seek that they grant it to me.”

“Oh, it will be so exciting and up-to-date with its spy and war flavor that everybody will forgive you.  You are a lovely darling and they’ll all be glad you are a girl—­all the boys especially,” said to me my Sue, with a defiance at my Buzz.

“Sure, Bobbyette, I’ll see that you’re no wall-flower,” he made answer to her in the person of me, with a return of that defiance.  “Come on, Susan, let me take you home.  Good night, old top—­no, I mean belle Marquise” and it was a very funny thing to see that Buzz with a great awkwardness, bend and kiss my hand at a laugh from my Sue as they left me.

It was not for many moments that I stood alone in the hall after the departure of my Sue and my Buzz, before there entered my beloved Uncle, the General Robert, and also my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner, who came to stand, one upon the one side of me and one upon the other.

“Sure you wouldn’t like to take her along with you to-night, Governor?” again asked my Uncle, the General Robert, with a great fierceness but also a twinkling of the eye.

“Only as far as your garden for a few minutes, General,” answered my Gouverneur Faulkner with that laugh of a boy I had remarked once before up in those mountains of Old Harpeth, and he took my hand in his as if to lead me through one of the tall windows out into the fragrant night.

“All right, take her and don’t return her until you have to,” remarked my Uncle, the General Robert, as he handed me in the direction of my Gouverneur Faulkner and immediately took his departure up the stairs.

And it was under the light of the old moon, in the garden of those grande dames Carruthers, that Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, who is the last of their line, walked with the great gentleman who was and is her lover.  Is it that those beautiful dead Grandmammas each planted her flowers in her own great happiness so that they would give forth a very tender perfume in which to enfold the wooings of their daughters then not come into the world?  I think it is so, and I was thus enwrapped in their fragrance as I was in the arms of that great Gouverneur Faulkner.