you guilty of more than disobedient folly; but I
fear it may have cost my poor child very dear! Is it your mother that
you dread?"

"I would be thankful even to know her in my mother's keeping!" he said.

"Is there no mistake?" said the Major; "my daughter, Mrs. Arden, saw her
at Brentford, safe and blooming."

"Oh, that was before--before--" said Sir Amyas, "the day before she fled
from my mother at Bowstead, and has been seen no more."

He put his hand over his face, and bowed it on the table in such
overpowering grief as checked the exclamations of horror and dismay and
the wrathful demands that were rising to the lips of his auditors,
and they only looked at one another in speechless sorrow. Presently
he recovered enough to say, "Have patience with me, and I will try
to explain all. My cousin, Miss Delavie, knows that I loved her sweet
sister from the moment I saw her, and that I hurried to London in the
hope of meeting her at my mother's house. On the contrary, my mother,
finding it vain to deny all knowledge of her, led me to believe that she
was boarded at a young ladies' school with my little sisters. I lived
on the vain hope of the holidays, and meantime every effort was made to
drive me into a marriage which my very soul abhorred, the contract
being absolutely made by the two ladies, the mothers, without my
participation, nay, against my protest. I was to be cajoled or else
persecuted into it--sold, in fact, that my mother's debts might be paid
before her husband's return! I knew my Uncle Belamour was my sole true
personal guardian, though he had never acted further than by affixing
his signature when needed. I ought to have gone long before to see him,
but as I now understand, obstacles had been purposely placed in my way,
while my neglectful reluctance was encouraged. It was in the forlorn
hope of finding in him a resource that took me to Bowstead at last, and
then it was that I learnt how far my mother could carry deception. There
I found my sisters, and learnt that my own sweetest life had been placed
there likewise. She was that afternoon visiting some old ladies, but my
uncle represented that my meeting her could only cause her trouble
and lead to her being removed. I was forced then to yield, having an
engagement in London that it would have been fatal to break, but I came
again at dark, and having sworn me to silence, he was forced to let
me take advantage of the darkness of his chamber to listen to