“It was merely,” said Betty, reluctantly, “that the Dean called her the star of the evening, and declared that her dancing equalled her face.”

“Well said of his reverence!  And his honour the baronet, what said he?”

“He said, sir, that so comely and debonnaire a couple had not been seen in these parts since you came home from Flanders and led off the assize ball with Mistress Urania Delavie.”

“There, Aura, ’tis my turn to blush!” cried the Major, comically hiding his face behind Betty’s fan.  “But all this time you have never told me who was this young spark.”

“That I cannot tell, sir,” returned Betty.  “We were sent home in the coach with Mistress Duckworth and her daughters, who talked so incessantly that we could not open our lips.  Who was he, Aura?”

“My Lady Herries only presented him as Sir Amyas, sister,” replied Aurelia.

“Sir Amyas!” cried her auditors, all together.

“Nothing more,” said Aurelia.  “Indeed she made as though he and I must be acquainted, and I suppose that she took me for Harriet, but I knew not how to explain.”

“No doubt,” said Harriet.  “I was sick of the music and folly, and had retired to the summerhouse with Peggy Duckworth, who had brought a sweet sonnet of Mr. Ambrose Phillips, ‘Defying Cupid.’”

Her father burst into a chuckling laugh, much to her mortification, though she would not seem to understand it, and Betty took up the moral.

“Sir Amyas!  Are you positive that you caught the name, child?”

“I thought so, sister,” said Aurelia, with the insecurity produced by such cross-questioning; “but I may have been mistaken, since, of course, the true Sir Amyas Belamour would never be here without my father’s knowledge.”

“Nor is there any other of the name,” said her father, “except that melancholic uncle of his who never leaves his dark chamber.”

“Depend upon it,” said Harriet, “Lady Herries said Sir Ambrose.  No doubt it was Sir Ambrose Watford.”

“Nay, Harriet, I demur to that,” said her father drolly.  “I flatter myself I was a more personable youth than to be likened to Watford with his swollen nose.  What like was your cavalier, Aura?”

“Indeed, sir, I cannot describe him.  I was so much terrified lest he should speak to me that I had much ado to mind my steps.  I know he had white gloves and diamond shoe-buckles, and that his feet moved by no means like those of Sir Ambrose.”

“Aura is a modest child, and does credit to her breeding,” said Betty.  “Thus much I saw, that the young gentleman was tall and personable enough to bear comparison even to you, sir, not more than nineteen or twenty years of age, in a laced scarlet uniform, as I think, of the Dragoon Guards, and with a little powder, but not enough to disguise that his hair was entire gold.”

“That all points to his being indeed young Belamour,” said her father; “age, military appearance, and all—­I wonder what this portends!”