“It is!—­yes, it is!” exclaimed Betty:  “Sir Amyas himself!”

In spite of his lameness, the Major had opened the door before Palmer could reach it; but his greeting and inquiry were cut short by the young man’s breathless question:  “Is she here?”

“Who?”

“My wife—­my love.  Your daughter, sweet Aurelia!  Ah! it was my one hope.”

“Come in, come in, sir,” entreated Betty, seeing how fearfully pale he grew.  “What has befallen you, and where is my sister?”

“Would that I knew!  I trusted to have found her here; but now, sir, you will come with me and find her!”

“I do not understand you, sir,” said the Major severely, “nor how you are concerned in the matter.  My daughter is the wife of your uncle, Mr. Belamour, and if, as I fear, you bear the marks of a duel in consequence of any levity towards her, I shall not find it easy to forgive.”

“On my word and honour it is no such thing,” said the youth, raising a face full of frank innocence:  “Your daughter is my wife, my most dear and precious wife, with full consent and knowledge of my uncle.  I was married to her in his clothes, in the darkened room, our names being the same!”

“Was this your promise?” Betty exclaimed.

“Miss Delavie, to the best of my ability I have kept my promise.  Your sister has never seen me, nor to her knowledge spoken with me.”

“These are riddles, young man,” said the Major sternly.  “If all be not well with my innocent child, I shall know how to demand an account.”

“Sir,” said the youth:  “I swear to you that she is the same innocent maiden as when she left you.  Oh!” he added with a gesture of earnest entreaty, “blame me as you will, only trace her.”

“Sit down, and let us hear,” said Betty kindly, pushing a chair towards him and pouring out a glass of wine.  He sank into the first, but waved aside the second, becoming however so pale that the Major sprang to hold the wine to his lips saying:  “Drink, boy, I say!”

“Not unless you forgive me,” he replied in a hoarse, exhausted voice.

“Forgive!  Of course, I forgive, if you have done no wrong by my child.  I see, I see, ’tis not wilfully.  You have been hurt in her defence.”

“Not exactly,” he said:  “I have much to tell,” but the words came slowly, and there was a dazed weariness about his eye that made Betty say, in spite of her anxiety—­“You cannot till you have eaten and rested.  If only one word to say where she is!”

“Oh! that I could!  My hope was to find her here,” and he was choked by a great strangling sob, which his youthful manhood sought to restrain.

Betty perceived that he was far from being recovered from the injury he had suffered, and did her best to restrain her own and her father’s anxiety till she had persuaded him to swallow some of the excellent coffee which Nannerl always made at sight of a guest.  To her father’s questions meantime, he had answered that he had broken his arm ten days ago, but he could not wait, he had posted down as soon as he could move.