“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.”
“Depend upon it,” said Harriet, “Lady Herries said Sir Ambrose. No doubt it was Sir Ambrose Watford.”