would drive me frantic by asking whether he was to keep up my character for consistency in my absence.  However, ten days since, the twelfth of May, after three weeks’ unendurable detention in town on one pretext or another, I escaped, and made my way to Bowstead at last.  My uncle told me that he had been obliged unwillingly to consent to our precious charge going to meet her sister at Brentford, and that she was but newly come home.  Presently she entered, but scarcely had I accosted her before a blaze broke out close to us.  The flame caught the dry old curtains, they flamed up like tinder, and as I leaped up on a table to tear them down, it gave way with me, I got a blow on the head, and knew no more.  It seems that my uncle, as soon as the fire was out, finding that my arm was broken, set out to send the groom for the doctor—­he being used to range the park at night.  The stupid fellow, coming home half tipsy from the village, saw his white hair and beard in the moonlight, took him for a ghost, and ran off headlong.  Thereupon my uncle, with new energy in the time of need, saddled the horse, changed his dressing-gown with the groom’s coat, and rode off to Brentford.  Then, finding that Dr. Hunter was not within, he actually went on to London, where Dr. Sandys, who had attended him ever since his would, forced him to go to bed, and to remain there till his own return.  Thus my darling had no one to protect her, when, an hour or so after the accident, my mother suddenly appeared.  Spies had been set on me by Mar, and so soon as they had brought intelligence of my movements she had hurried off from Ranelagh, in full dress, just as she was, to track and surprise me.  My uncle, having gone by the bridle path, had not met her, and I was only beginning to return to my senses.  I have a dim recollection of hearing my mother threatening and accusing Aurelia, and striving to interfere, but I was as one bound down, and all after that is blank to me.  When my understanding again became clear, I could only learn that my mother had locked her into her own room, whence she had escaped, and”—­with a groan—­“nothing has been heard of her since!” Again he dropped his head on his hand as one in utter dejection.

“Fled!  What has been done to trace her?” cried the Major.

“Nothing could be done till my mother was gone and my uncle returned.  The delirium was on me, and whatever I tried to say turned to raving, all the worse if I saw or heard my mother, till Dr. Sandys forbade her coming near me.  She was invited to the Queen’s Sunday card party moreover, so she fortunately quitted Bowstead just before Mr. Belamour’s return.”

“Poor gentleman, he could do nothing,” said Betty.