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.

"You ought to sleep before you tell us farther," said the Major,
speaking from a strong sense of the duties of a host; but he was
relieved when the youth answered, "You are very good, sir, but I could
not sleep till you know all."

"Speak, then," said the Major, "I cannot look at your honest young
countenance and think