looked queenly, and I half imagined that I detected in her face a gleam of satisfaction at the involuntary start which her unexpected appearance caused me to make.  She accepted my apology for Toddie with queenly graciousness, and then, instead of proposing that we should follow the other ladies, as a moment before I had hoped she would, she dropped into a chair.  I accepted the invitation; the children should have been in bed half an hour before, but my sense of responsibility had departed when Miss Mayton appeared.  The little scamps were safe until they should perform some new and unexpected act of impishness.  They retired to one end of the piazza, and busied themselves in experiments upon a large Newfoundland dog, while I, the happiest man alive, talked to the glorious woman before me, and enjoyed the spectacle of her radiant beauty.  The twilight came and deepened, but imagination prevented the vision from fading.  With the coming of the darkness and the starlight, our voices unconsciously dropped to lower tones, and her voice seemed purest music.  And yet we said nothing which all the world might not have listened to without suspecting a secret.  The ladies returned in little groups, but either out of womanly intuition or in answer to my unspoken but fervent prayers, passed us and went into the house.  I was affected by an odd mixture of desperate courage and despicable cowardice.  I determined to tell her all, yet I shrank from the task with more terror than ever befell me in the first steps of a charge.

Suddenly a small shadow came from behind us and stood between us, and the voice of Budge remarked:—­

“Uncle Harry ’spects you, Miss Mayton.”

“Suspects me?—­of what, pray?” exclaimed the lady, patting my nephew’s cheek.

“Budge!” said I—­I feel that my voice rose nearly to a scream—­ “Budge, I must beg of you to respect the sanctity of confidential communications.”

“What is it, Budge?” persisted Miss Mayton; “you know the old adage, Mr. Burton:  ‘Children and fools speak the truth.’  Of what does he suspect me, Budge?”

“’Tain’t Sus-pect at all,” said Budge, “it’s es-pect.”

“Expect?” echoed Miss Mayton.

“No, not ‘ex,’ it’s es-spect.  I know all about it, ’cause I asked him.  Espect is what folks do when they think you’re nice, and like to talk to you, and—­”

“Respect is what the boy is trying to say, Miss Mayton,” I interrupted, to prevent what I feared might follow.  “Budge has a terrifying faculty for asking questions, and the result of some of them, this morning, was my endeavor to explain to him the nature of the respect in which gentlemen hold ladies.”

“Yes,” continued Budge, “I know all about it.  Only Uncle Harry don’t say it right.  What he calls espect I calls love.”

There was an awkward pause—­it seemed an age.  Another blunder, and all on account of those dreadful children.  I could think of no possible way to turn the conversation; stranger yet, Miss Mayton could not do so either.  Something must be done—­I could at least be honest, come what would—­I would be honest.