“Oh! nurse, that is impossible!”

“Lawk-a-day, missie, there’s nothing my Lady wouldn’t say to put him off the scent.  Bless you, ’tis not for us servants to talk, or I could tell you tales!  But there, mum’s the word, as my Dove says, or he wouldn’t ha’ sat on his box these twenty year!”

“My Lady is very kind to me,” said Aurelia, with a little assumption of her father’s repressive manner.

“I’m right glad to hear it, Miss Aureely.  A sweet lady she can be when she is in the mood, though nothing like so sweet as his Honour.  ’Tis ingrain with him down to the bone, as I may say—­and I should know, having had him from the day he was weaned.  To see him come up to the nussery, and toss about his little brother, would do your very heart good; and then he sits him down, without a bit of pride, and will have me tell him all about our journey up to Lunnon, and the fair, and the play and all; and the same with Dove in the stables.  He would have the whole story, and how we was parted at Knightsbridge, I never so much as guessing where you was—­you that your sister had given into my care!  At last, one day when I was sitting a darning of stockings in the window at the back, where I can see out over to the green fields, up his Honour comes, and says he, with his finger to his lips, ’Set your heart at rest, nurse, I’ve found her!’ Then he told me how he went down to see his old uncle.  Mr. Wayland had been urging him on one side that ’twas no more than his duty; and her Ladyship, on the other, would have it that Mr. Belamour was right down melancholy mad, and would go into a raving fit if his nevvy did but go near the place.”

“She did not say that!”

“Oh yes, she did, miss, I’ll take my oath of it, for I was in the coach with Master Wayland on my knee, when she was telling a lady how hard it was they could have no use of Bowstead, because of Sir Jovian’s brother being there, who had got the black melancholics, and could not be removed.  The lady says how good she was to suffer it, and she answers, that there was no being harsh with poor Sir Jovian’s brother, though he had a strange spleen at her and her son, and always grew worse when they did but go near the house; but that some measures must be taken when her son came of age or was married.”

“But he came at last!”

“He said he wanted to see for himself, and thought he could at least find out from the servants whether his uncle was in the state they reported.  And there he found his three little sisters, and that you was their tutoress, and they couldn’t say enough about you, nor the poor gentleman neither.  ‘I didn’t see her, nurse,’ says he, ’but there’s a bit of her own sweet fingers’ work.’  And sure enough, I knew it, for it was a knot of the very ribbon you had in your hair the day I came to talk to your sister about the journey.”

“That was what Amy told me she gave him.”