Here was a scene of embarrassment.  Not among all my acquaintances were there, perhaps, two persons, whom I would have least desired to witness in me such a fault as the one of which I had been guilty.  For a little while, I knew not what to say.  I sat, overcome with mortification.  At length, I arose, and said with an effort,

“Walk in, ladies!  How are you this morning?  I’m pleased to see you.  Take chairs.  My niece, Mrs. Williams, and Mrs. Glenn.  I hope you will excuse us.  We were—­”

“Oh, no apologies, Mrs. Smith,” returned one of the ladies, with a quiet smile, and an air of self-possession.  “Pardon this intrusion.  We understood the servant that you were not at home.”

“Engaged, she meant,” said I, a deeper crimson suffusing my face.  “The fact is, we are working for dear life, to get the children ready for a party to-night, and wished to be excused from seeing any one.”

“Certainly—­all right,” returned Mrs. Williams, “I merely came in to say to your domestic (I had forgotten it at the door) that my sister expected to leave for her home in New York in a day or two, and would call here with me, to-morrow afternoon.”

“I shall be very happy to see her,” said I,—­“very happy.  Do come in and sit down for a little while.  If I had only known it was you.”

Now that last sentence, spoken in embarrassment and mental confusion, was only making matters worse.  It placed me in a false and despicable light before my visitors; for in it was the savor of hypocrisy, which is foreign to my nature.

“No, thank you,” replied my visitors.  “Good morning!”

And they retired, leaving me so overcome with shame, mortification, confusion, and distress, that I burst into tears.

“To think that I should have done such a thing!” was my first remark, so soon as I had a little recovered my self-possession; and I looked up, half timidly, into the face of my niece.  I shall not soon forget the expression of surprise and pain that was in her fair young countenance.  I had uttered a falsehood in her presence, and thus done violence to the good opinion she had formed of me.  The beautiful ideal of her aunt, which had filled her mind, was blurred over; and her heart was sad in consequence.

“Dear Aggy!” said I, throwing my work upon the floor, and bending earnestly towards her.—­“Don’t think too meanly of me for this little circumstance.  I never was guilty of that thing before—­never!  And well have I been punished for my thoughtless folly I spoke from impulse, and not reflection, when I told Mary to say that I was not at home, and repented of what I had done almost as soon as the words passed my lips.”

Agnes looked at me for some moments, until her eyes filled with tears.  Then she said in a low, sweet, earnest voice: 

“Mother always says, if she cannot see any one who calls, that she is engaged.”

“And so do I, dear,” I returned.  “This is my first offence against truth, and you may be sure that it will be the last.”