"
"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.
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