LITMIR.BIZ

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in that look a history, and he could not refrain from glancing acutely and asking: "Do you?"

      "Regret it, sir?" The question aroused one of those struggles in the young man's breast which a passionate storm of tears may still, and which sink like leaden death into the soul when tears come not. Richard's eyes had the light of the desert.

      "Do you?" his father repeated. "You tempt me--I almost fear you do." At the thought--for he expressed his mind--the pity that he had for Richard was not pure gold.

      "Ask me what I think of her, sir! Ask me what she is! Ask me what it is to have taken one of God's precious angels and chained her to misery! Ask me what it is to have plunged a sword into her heart, and to stand over her and see such a creature bleeding! Do I regret that? Why, yes, I do! Would you?"

      His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his eyebrows.

      Sir Austin winced and reddened. Did he understand? There is ever in the mind's eye a certain wilfulness. We see and understand; we see and won't understand.

      "Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon," he said gravely: and in the same voice Richard answered: "I passed her because I could not do otherwise."

      "Your wife, Richard?"

      "Yes! my wife!"

      "If she had seen you, Richard?"

      "God spared her that!"

      Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing Richard's hat and greatcoat in her energetic hands, came between them at this juncture. Dimples of commiseration were in her cheeks while she kissed her brother's perplexed forehead. She forgot her trouble about Clare, deploring his fatuity.

      Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart. As of old, he took counsel with Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing. "Somebody has kissed him, sir, and the chaste boy can't get over it." This absurd suggestion did more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable reasonable key to Richard's conduct. It set him thinking that it might be a prudish strain in the young man's mind, due to the System in difficulties.

      "I may have been wrong in one thing," he said, with an air of the utmost doubt of it. "I, perhaps, was wrong in allowing him so much liberty during his probation."

      Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded it.

      "Yes, yes; that is on me."

      His was an order of mind that would accept the most burdensome charges, and by some species of moral usury make a profit out of them.

      Clare was little talked of. Adrian attributed the employment of the telegraph to John Todhunter's uxorious distress at a toothache, or possibly the first symptoms of an heir to his house.

      "That child's mind has disease in it... She is not sound," said the baronet.

      On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood Mrs. Berry. Her wish to speak a few words with the baronet reverentially communicated, she was ushered upstairs into his room.

      Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was beckoned to occupy.

      "Well' ma'am, you have something to say," observed the baronet, for she seemed loth to commence.

      "Wishin' I hadn't--" Mrs. Berry took him up, and mindful of the good rule to begin at the beginning, pursued: "I dare say, Sir Austin, you don't remember me, and I little thought when last we parted our meeting 'd be like this. Twenty year don't go over one without showin' it, no more than twenty ox. It's a might o' time,--twenty year! Leastways not quite twenty, it ain't."

      "Round figures are best," Adrian remarked.

      "In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up, and got himself married!" said Mrs. Berry, diving straight into the case.

      Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit who had assisted his son in that venture. It was a stretch of his patience to hear himself addressed on a family matter; but he was naturally courteous.

      "He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger! If twenty year alters us as have knowed each other on the earth, how must they alter they that we parted with just come from heaven! And a heavenly babe he were! so sweet! so strong! so fat!"

      Adrian laughed aloud.

      Mrs. Berry bumped a curtsey to him in her chair, continuing: "I wished afore I spoke to say how thankful am I bound to be for my pension not cut short, as have offended so, but that I know Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey, ain't one o' them that likes to hear their good deeds pumlished. And a pension to me now, it's something more than it were. For a pension and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid, which I was--that's a bait many a man'll bite, that won't so a forsaken wife!"

      "If you will speak to the point, ma'am, I will listen to you," the baronet interrupted her.

      "It's the beginnin' that's the worst, and that's over, thank the Lord! So I'll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:--Lord speed me! Believin' our idees o' matrimony to be sim'lar, then, I'll say, once married--married for life! Yes! I don't even like widows. For I can't stop at the grave. Not at the tomb I can't stop. My husband's my husband, and if I'm a body at the Resurrection, I say, speaking humbly, my Berry is the husband o' my body; and to think of two claimin' of me then--it makes me hot all over. Such is my notion of that state 'tween man and woman. No givin' in marriage, o' course I know; and if so I'm single."

      The baronet suppressed a smile. "Really, my good woman, you wander very much."

      "Beggin' pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the same, and I'm comin' to it. Ac-knowledgin' our error, it'd done, and bein' done, it's writ aloft. Oh! if you ony knew what a sweet young creature she be! Indeed; 'taint all of humble birth that's unworthy, Sir Austin. And she got her idees, too: She reads History! She talk that sensible as would surprise ye. But for all that she's a prey to the artful o' men--unpertected. And it's a young marriage--but there's no fear for her, as far as she go. The fear's t'other way. There's that in a man--at the commencement--which make of him Lord knows what if you any way interferes: whereas a woman bides quiet! It's consolation catch her, which is what we mean by seduein'. Whereas a man--he's a savage!"

      Sir Austin turned his face to Adrian, who was listening with huge delight.

      "Well, ma'am, I see you have something in your mind, if you would only come to it quickly."

      "Then here's my point, Sir Austin. I say you bred him so as there ain't another young gentleman like him in England, and proud he make me. And as for her, I'll risk sayin'--it's done, and no harm--you might search England through, and nowhere will ye find a maid that's his match like his own wife. Then there they be. Are they together as should be? O Lord no! Months they been divided. Then she all lonely and exposed, I went, and fetched her out of seducers' ways--which they may say what they like, but the inn'cent is most open to when they're healthy and confidin'--I fetch her, and--the liberty--boxed her safe in my own house. So much for that sweet! That you may do with women. But it's him--Mr. Richard--I am bold, I know, but there--I'm in for it, and the Lord'll help me! It's him, Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm from a young marriage. It's him, and--I say nothin' of her, and how sweet she bears it, and it's eating her at a time when Natur' should have no other trouble but the one that's goin' on it's him, and I ask--so bold--shall there--and a Christian gentlemen his father--shall there be a tug 'tween him as a son and him as a husband--soon to be somethin' else? I speak bold out--I'd have sons obey their fathers, but a priest's words spoke over them, which they're now in my ears, I say I ain't a doubt on earth--I'm sure there ain't one in heaven--which dooty's the holier of the two."

      Sir Austin heard her to an end. Their views on the junction of the sexes were undoubtedly akin. To be lectured on his prime subject, however, was slightly disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to assent to this old lady's doctrine was rather humiliating, when it could not be averred that he had latterly followed

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