long been begun."

"I was too busy to heed the time," said Betty, "for I obtained the
recipe for those delicious almond-cakes, and showed Mrs. Waldron the
Vienna mode of clearing coffee. When I came back the fiddles were
playing, and Aurelia going down the middle with a young gentleman in a
scarlet coat. Poor little Robert Rowe was too bashful to find a partner,
though he longed to dance; so I made another couple with him, and thus
missed further speech, save that as we took our leave, both Sir George
and the Dean complimented me, and said what there is no occasion to
repeat just now, sir, when I ought to be fetching your supper."

"Ha! Is it too flattering for little Aura?" asked her father. "Come,
never spare. She will hear worse than that in her day, I'll warrant."

"It was merely," said Betty, reluctantly, "that the Dean called her the
star of the evening, and declared that her dancing equalled her face."

"Well said of his reverence! And his honour the baronet, what said he?"

"He said, sir, that so comely and debonnaire a couple had not been seen
in these parts since you came home from Flanders and led off the assize
ball with Mistress Urania Delavie."

"There, Aura, 'tis my turn to blush!" cried the Major, comically hiding
his face behind Betty's fan. "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
kn