CHAPTER XVIII. THE PROPOSAL.


Love sweetest lies concealed in night.--T. MOORE.


The Major rode up to the Great House to announce that he would only
give his answer after having conferred with both his daughter and
the suitor.

With tears in her beautiful blue eyes, Lady Belamour demanded why her
dear cousin Harry could not trust the Urania he had known all her life
to decide what was for the happiness of the sweet child whom she loved
like her own.

She made him actually feel as if it were a cruel and unmerited
suspicion, but she did not over come him. "Madam," he said, "it
would be against my orders, as father of a family, to give my child
away without doing my poor best for her."

There, in spite of all obstacles suggested and all displeasure
manifested, he stuck fast, until, without choosing to wait till a
shower of sleet and rain was over. Vexation and perplexity always
overset his health, and the chill, added to them, rendered him so
ill the next morning that Betty knew there was no chance of his
leaving his room for the next month or six weeks; and she therefore
sent a polite and formal note to the Great House explaining that he