“So he may seem to you and to my poor infatuated boy, but you see those crazed persons are full of strange devices and secrets, as indeed we have already experienced.  I see what you would say; he may appear sane and plausible enough to a stranger, but to those who have known him ever since his misfortunes, the truth is but too plain.  He was harmless enough as long as he was content to remain secluded in his dark chamber, but now that I hear he has broken loose, Heaven knows what mischief he may do.  My dear cousin Delavie, you are the prop left to me in these troubles, with my poor good man in the hands of those cruel pirates, who may be making him work in chains for all I know,” and the tears came into her beautiful eyes.

“They will not do that,” said Major Delavie, eager to reassure her; “I have heard enough of their tricks to know that they keep such game as he most carefully till they can get a ransom.”

“Your are sure of that!”

“Perfectly.  I met an Italian fellow at Vienna who told me how it was all managed by the Genoese bankers.”

“Ah!  I was just thinking that you would be the only person who could be of use—­you who know foreign languages and all their ways.  If you could go abroad, and arrange it for me!”

“If my daughter were restored—–­” began the Major.

“I see what you would say, and I am convinced that the first step towards the discovery would be to put Mr. Belamour under restraint, and separate his black from him.  Then one or other of them would speak, and we might know how she has been played upon.”

“What does your Ladyship suppose then?” asked the Major.

“This is what I imagine.  The poor silly maid repents herself and comes back in search of me.  Would that she had found me, her best friend!  But instead of that, she falls in with old Belamour, and he, having by this time perceived the danger of the perilous masquerade in which he had involved my unlucky boy, a minor, has mewed her up somewhere, till the cry should be over.”

“That would be the part of a villain, but scarcely of a madman,” said Betty dryly.

“My dear cousin Betty, there are lunatics endowed with a marvellous shrewdness to commit senseless villanies, and to put on a specious seeming.  Depend upon it, my unfortunate brother-in-law’s wanderings at night were not solely spent in communings with the trees and brooks.  Who knows what might be discovered if he were under proper restraint?  And it is to you, the only relation I have, that I must turn for assistance in my most unhappy circumstances,” she added, wit a glance so full of sweet helplessness that no man could withstand it.  “I am so glad you are here.  You will be acting for me as well as for yourself in endeavouring to find your poor lovely child, and the first thing I would have done would be to separate Belamour and his black, put them under restraint, and interrogate them separately.  You could easily get an order from a magistrate.  But ah, here comes my woman.  No more now.  You will come to me this evening, and we can talk further on this matter.  I shall have some company, and it will not be a regular rout, only a few card-tables, and a little dancing for the young people.”