"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.
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