"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 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.
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