cousin, and wanted to set him down to loo or ombre; but the veteran knew too well what the play in her house was, and saw, moreover, Lady Aresfield sitting like a harpy before the green baize field of her spoils. While he was refusing, Sir Amyas returned to him, saying, 'Sir, here is a gentleman whom I think you must have known in Flanders;' and the Major found himself shaking hands with an old comrade. Save for his heavy heart, he would been extremely happy in the ensuing conversation.
In the meantime Lady Belamour, turning towards a stout, clumsy, short girl, her intensely red cheeks and huge black eyes staring out of her powder, while the extreme costliness of her crimson satin dress, and profusion of her rubies were ridiculous on the unformed person of a creature scarcely fifteen. If she had been any one else she would have been a hideous spectacle in the eyes of the exquisitely tasteful Lady Belamour, who, detecting the expression in her son's eye, whispered behind her fan, 'We will soon set all that right;' then aloud, 'My son cannot recover from his surprise. He did not imagine that we could steal you for an evening from Queen's Square to procure him this delight.' Then as Sir Amyas bowed, 'The Yellow Room is cleared for dancing. Lady Belle will favour you, Amyas.'
'You must excuse me, madam,' he said; 'I have not yet the free use of my arm, and could not acquit myself properly in a minuet.'
'I hate minuets,' returned Lady Belle; 'the very notion gives me the spleen.'
'Ah, pretty heretic!' said my Lady, making a playful gesture with her fan at the peony-coloured cheek. 'I meant this wounded knight to have converted you, but he must amuse you otherwise. What, my Lord I thought you knew I never meant to dance again. Cannot you open the dance without me? I, who have no spirits!'
The rest was lost as she sailed away on the arm of a gentleman in a turquoise-coloured coat, and waistcoat embroidered with gillyflowers; leaving the Lady Arabella on the hands of her son, who, neither as host nor gentleman, could escape, until the young lady had found some other companion. He stiffly and wearily addressed to her the inquiry how she liked London.
'I should like it monstrously if I were not moped up in school,' she answered. 'So you have come back. How did you hurt your arm?' she said, in the most provincial of dialects.
'In the fire, madam.'
'What? In snatching your innamorata from the flames?'
'Not precisely,' he said.
'Come, now, tell me; did she set the room a-fire?' demanded the young lady. 'Oh, you need not think to deceive me. My brother Mar's coachman told my mamma's woman all about it, and how she was locked up and ran away; but they have her fast enough now, after all her tricks!'
'Who have? For pity's sake tell me, Lady Belle!'
Loving to tease, she exclaimed: 'There, now, what a work to make about a white-faced little rustic!'
'Your ladyship has not seen her.'
'Have I not, though? I don't admire your taste.'
'Is she in Queen's Square?'
'Do not you wish me to tell you where you can find your old faded doll, with a waist just like a wasp, and an old blue sacque-not a bit of powder in her hair?'
'Lady Belle, if you would have me for ever beholden to you-'
'The cap fits,' she cried, clapping her hands. 'Not a word to say for her! I would not have such a beau for the world.'
'When I have found her it will be time to defend her beauty! If your ladyship would only tell me where she is, you know not what gratitude I should feel!'
'I dare say, but that's my secret. My mamma and yours would be ready to kill me with rage if they knew I had let out even so much.'
'They would forgive you. Come, Lady Belle, think of her brave old father, and give some clue to finding her. Where is she?'
'Ah! where you will never get at her!'
'Is she at Queen's Square?'
'What would you do if you thought she was? Get a constable and come and search? Oh, what a rage Madam would be in! Goodness me, what sport!' and she fell back in a violent giggling fit; but the two matrons were so delighted to see the young people talking to one another, that there was no attempt to repress her. Sir Amyas made another attempt to elicit whether Aurelia were really at the school in Queen's Square, but Lady Arabella still refused to answer directly. Then he tried the expedient of declaring that she was only trying to tease him, and had not really seen the lady. He pretended not to believe her, but when she insisted, 'Hair just the colour of Lady Belamour's,' his incredulity vanished; but on his next entreaty, she put on a sly look imitated from the evil world in which she lived, and declared she should not encourage naughty doings. The youth, who though four years older, was by far the more simple and innocent of the two, replied with great gravity, 'It is the Lady Belamour, my own wife, that I am seeking.'
'That's just the nonsense she talks!'
'For Heaven's sake, what did she say?'
But Belle was tired of her game, and threw herself boisterously on a young lady who had the 'sweetest enamel necklace in the world,' and whose ornaments she began to handle and admire in true spoilt-child fashion.
Sir Amyas then betook himself to the Major, who saw at once by his eye and step that something was gained. They took leave together, Lady Belamour making a hurried lamentation that she had seen so little of her dear cousin, but accepting her son's excuse that he must return to his quarters; and they walked away together escorted by Palmer and Grey, as well as by two link-boys, summer night though it was.
Sir Amyas repaired first to the hotel, where Mr. Belamour and Betty were still sitting, for even the fashionable world kept comparatively early hours, and it was not yet eleven o'clock. The parlor where they sat was nearly dark, one candle out and the other shaded so as to produce the dimness which Mr. Belamour still preferred, and they were sitting on either side of the open window, Betty listening to her companion's reminiscences of the evenings enlivened by poor Aurelia, and of the many traits of her goodness, sweet temper, and intelligence which he had stored up in his mind. He had, he said, already learned through her to know Miss Delavie, and he declared that the voices of the sisters were so much alike that he could have believed himself at Bowstead with the gentle visitor who had brought him new life.
The tidings of Lady Arabella's secret were eagerly listened to, and the token of the mouse-coloured hair was accepted; Sir Amyas comparing, to every one's satisfaction, a certain lock that he bore on a chain next his heart, and a little knot, surrounded with diamonds, in a ring, which he had been still wearing from force of habit, though he declared he should never endure to do so again.
It was evident that Lady Belle had really seen Aurelia; and where could that have been save at the famous boarding-school in Queen's Square, where the daughters of 'the great' were trained in the accomplishments of the day? The Major, with rising hopes, declared that he had always maintained that his cousin meant no ill by his daughter, and though it had been cruel, not to say worse, in her, to deny all knowledge of the fugitive, yet women would have their strange ways.
'That is very hard on us women, sir,' said Betty.
'Ah! my dear, poor Urania never had such a mother as you, and she has lived in the great world besides, and that's a bad school. You will not take our Aurelia much into it, my dear boy,' he added, turning wistfully to Sir Amyas.
'I would not let a breath blow on her that could touch the bloom of her charming frank innocence,' cried the lad. 'But think you she can be in health? Lady Belle spoke of her being pale!'
'Look at my young lady herself!' said the Major, which made them all laugh. They were full of hope. The Major and his daughter would go themselves the next day, and a father's claim could not be refused even though not enforced according to Lady Arabella's desire.
Their coach-for so Sir Amyas insisted on their going-was at the door at the earliest possible moment that a school for young ladies could be supposed to be astir; long before Mr. Belamour was up, for he retained his old habits so much that it was only on great occasions the he rose before noon; and while Eugene, under the care of Jumbo and Grey, was going off in great felicity to see the morning parade in St. James's Park.
One of the expedients of well-born Huguenot refugees had been tuition, and Madame d'Elmar had made here boarding-school so popular and fashionable that a second generation still maintained its fame, and damsels of the
