It was a request that could not be refused, but Aurelia was not equipped for such a visit, and shrank timidly from showing herself.  So when Mr. Belamour came down it was agreed that she should remain at home under his protection, in which she could be very happy, though his person was as strange to her as his voice was familiar.  Indeed she felt as if a burden was on her mind till she could tell him of her shame at having failed in the trust and silence that he had enjoined on her.

“My child,” he said, “we have carried it too far.  It was more than we ought to have required of you, and I knew it.  I had made up my mind, and told my nephew that the first time you really asked I should tell the whole truth, and trust to your discretion, while of course he wished for nothing more.”

“As my sister said, it was my fault.”

“Nay, I think you had good cause to stand on your defence, and I cannot have you grieve over it.  You have shown an unshaken steadiness under trial since, such as ought indeed to be compensation.”

“I deserved it all,” said Aurelia; “and I do hope that I am a little wiser and less foolish for it all; a little more of a woman,” she added, blushing.

“A soul trained by love and suffering, as in the old legend,” said Mr. Belamour thoughtfully.

Thoroughly pleasant was here tete-a-tete with him, especially when she artlessly asked him whether her dear sister were not all she had told him, and he fervently answered that indeed she was “a perfect lesson to all so-called beauties of what true loveliness of a countenance can be.”

“Oh, I am so glad,” cried Aurelia.  “I never saw a face—­a woman’s I mean—­that I like as well as my dear sister’s!”

She was sorry when they were interrupted by a call from Mr. Wayland, who had reported himself at the Secretary of War, but could do no more that day, and had come to inquire for her.  He and Mr. Belamour drew apart into a window, and conversed in a low voice, and then they came to her, and Mr. Wayland desired to know from where she found the recipe for the cosmetic which had nearly cost her so dearly.

“It was in a shelf in the wainscoting, in a sort of little study at that house,” said Aurelia.

“Among other papers?”

“Quantities of other papers.”

“Of what kind?”

“Letters, and bills, and wills, and parchments!  Oh, so dusty!  Some were on paper tumbling to pieces, and some on tiny slips of parchment.”

“And you read them all?”

“I had to read them to see what they were, as well as I could make out, and sorted them and tied them up in bundles.”

“Can you tell me whether they were Delavie wills?”

“I should think they were.  I know that the oldest of all were Latin, and I could make nothing out in them but something about Manoriem and Carminster, and what looked like the names of some of the fields at home.”