“Then tell me all. Do you not see how impatient you have made me with your mysterious hints?”
She leaned nearer to him and whispered, hoarsely:
“She was here in this house at midnight last night. I was lying asleep on my bed. The windows were raised, for the air was oppressively warm. Then, too, I liked to smell the mingled odors of rose and honeysuckle clambering up the trellis. It was clear, bright moonlight, so I extinguished my lamp when I retired.”
“Yes, yes; go on, Maybelle!” breathed Otho, impatiently.
“I fell asleep, and rested calmly until about midnight, when I awakened in a fright, for some one was shaking me rudely.
“‘Get up—get up, Maybelle Maury! I want the letters my lover wrote me—the letters you have stolen!’ cried an angry voice.
“I started bolt upright in bed, frightened almost to death, and half-dazed by being so suddenly roused from sleep, and there before me was that little vixen Floy, all in ghastly white, her golden hair all in a fluff over her head like a halo. She stood in a patch of white moonlight that made her look ethereal, and in my confusion I really took her for a ghost!”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Otho, impatiently; and Maybelle said, deprecatingly:
“You must remember that I was roused from sleep and taken by surprise, or I should not have been so easily deceived. And she was so imperative, she did not give me time to collect my thoughts, but went on, angrily:
“‘Get up, Maybelle Maury, you wicked, wicked girl, and give me my letters this minute, or I will go to your Mother and tell her how cruelly you and Otho have treated me! You will not enjoy that, for your mother is a good woman; she would be shocked if she knew that you told the postman a lie that you might get my letters and keep them from me.’”