“I suppose it was to be, my dear!  It’s my punishment for meddlin’ wi’ such matters.  No, I’m not sorry.  Bless ye both.  Who’d ’a thought you was so wilful?—­you that any one might have taken for one of the silly-softs!  You’re a pair, my dear! indeed you are!  You was made to meet!  But we mustn’t show him we’ve been crying.—­Men don’t like it when they’re happy.  Let’s wash our faces and try to bear our lot.”

So saying the black-satin bunch careened to a renewed deluge.  She deserved some sympathy, for if it is sad to be married in another person’s ring, how much sadder to have one’s own old accustomed lawful ring violently torn off one’s finger and eternally severed from one!  But where you have heroes and heroines, these terrible complications ensue.

They had now both fought their battle of the ring, and with equal honour and success.

In the chamber of banquet Richard was giving Ripton his last directions.  Though it was a private wedding, Mrs. Berry had prepared a sumptuous breakfast.  Chickens offered their breasts:  pies hinted savoury secrets:  things mystic, in a mash, with Gallic appellatives, jellies, creams, fruits, strewed the table:  as a tower in the midst, the cake colossal:  the priestly vesture of its nuptial white relieved by hymeneal splendours.

Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry had expended upon this breakfast, and why?  There is one who comes to all feasts that have their basis in Folly, whom criminals of trained instinct are careful to provide against:  who will speak, and whose hateful voice must somehow be silenced while the feast is going on.  This personage is The Philosopher.  Mrs. Berry knew him.  She knew that he would come.  She provided against him in the manner she thought most efficacious:  that is, by cheating her eyes and intoxicating her conscience with the due and proper glories incident to weddings where fathers dilate, mothers collapse, and marriage settlements are flourished on high by the family lawyer:  and had there been no show of the kind to greet her on her return from the church, she would, and she foresaw she would, have stared at squalor and emptiness, and repented her work.  The Philosopher would have laid hold of her by the ear, and called her bad names.  Entrenched behind a breakfast-table so legitimately adorned, Mrs. Berry defied him.  In the presence of that cake he dared not speak above a whisper.  And there were wines to drown him in, should he still think of protesting; fiery wines, and cool:  claret sent purposely by the bridegroom for the delectation of his friend.