“I presume these are Mr. Thompson’s lodgings?” he remarked, with a look at the table.

Mrs. Berry’s head and the whites of her eyes informed him that they were not Mr. Thompson’s lodgings.

“No?” said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye about him.  “Mr. Feverel is out, I suppose?”

A convulsive start at the name, and two corroborating hands dropped on her knees, formed Mrs. Berry’s reply.

“Mr. Feverel’s man,” continued Adrian, “told me I should be certain to find him here.  I thought he would be with his friend, Mr. Thompson.  I’m too late, I perceive.  Their entertainment is over.  I fancy you have been having a party of them here, ma’am?—­a bachelors’ breakfast!”

In the presence of that cake this observation seemed to mask an irony so shrewd that Mrs. Berry could barely contain herself.  She felt she must speak.  Making her face as deplorably propitiating as she could, she began: 

“Sir, may I beg for to know your name?”

Mr. Harley accorded her request.

Groaning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued: 

“And you are Mr. Harley, that was—­oh! and you’ve come for
Mr.?”—­

Mr. Richard Feverel was the gentleman Mr. Harley had come for.

“Oh! and it’s no mistake, and he’s of Raynham Abbey?” Mrs. Berry inquired.

Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred there.

“His father’s Sir Austin?” wailed the black-satin bunch from behind her handkerchief.

Adrian verified Richard’s descent.

“Oh, then, what have I been and done!” she cried, and stared blankly at her visitor.  “I been and married my baby!  I been and married the bread out of my own mouth.  O Mr. Harley!  Mr. Harley!  I knew you when you was a boy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you.  And it’s my softness that’s my ruin, for I never can resist a man’s asking.  Look at that cake, Mr. Harley!”

Adrian followed her directions quite coolly.  “Wedding-cake, ma’am!” he said.

“Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!”

“Did you make it yourself, ma’am?”

The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry and upset that train of symbolic representations by which she was seeking to make him guess the catastrophe and spare her the furnace of confession.

“I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley,” she replied.  “It’s a bought cake, and I’m a lost woman.  Little I dreamed when I had him in my arms a baby that I should some day be marrying him out of my own house!  I little dreamed that!  Oh, why did he come to me!  Don’t you remember his old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that went away so sudden, and no fault of hers, Mr. Harley!  The very mornin’ after the night you got into Mr. Benson’s cellar, and got so tipsy on his Madeary—­I remember it as clear as yesterday!—­and Mr. Benson was that angry he threatened to use the whip to you, and I helped put you to bed.  I’m that very woman.”