That night Betsy had a long talk with her mother. Poor Mrs. Gilcrest, who for many years had been oppressed by the dark secret of her early life, felt now, when she had learned all that her daughter had to reveal, as if a great burden was lifted from her spirit. She rejoiced not only in the certainty that her own clandestine marriage was valid, and that her cousin had been a lawfully wedded wife, but also because of the knowledge that Abner Logan, whom she had always greatly liked, was the son of her well-beloved cousin and foster sister, Mary Hollis, and that he was in every respect a suitable mate for Betsy. In her relief and joy she felt that she now had courage to confess all to her husband. The next evening she nerved herself for this ordeal. Mrs. Gilcrest could not have chosen a less favorable occasion for her purpose; for Major Gilcrest had just learned, through one of the servants, that Betsy had met her lover the afternoon before. He was furiously exasperated that his daughter had thus set at naught his commands; and he raved in so frenzied a style of disobedience, deception, and of the infamy of any girl who would hold clandestine meetings with a man, that poor, cowardly Mrs. Gilcrest's newly acquired valor evaporated before the fire of her husband's wrath, and she dared not confess the secret she had withheld during all their married life. She did, however, intercede for Abner, venturing her conviction that in birth and character he was fit to wed with Betsy. But the poor creature was so cowed by her habitual awe of her lord and master, and by his present irascible temper, as well as by the burden of her own yet unconfessed secret, that the stammering, incoherent tale she told of the two John Logans, of the time and place of Mary Hollis' death, and of Abner's being Andrew Hite's legal heir, was anything but convincing. Her feeble attempt at explanation and intercession, instead of softening the obstinate Major, only wrought him up to a still higher pitch of exasperation. Mrs. Gilcrest's effort to enlighten her husband having failed, young Logan engaged an attorney, through whom the lord of Oaklands was perforce convinced of Abner's legitimacy and right to the Hite possessions.