“She regrets it,” muttered the lover.  “Good God!  I think she fears me.”  He dropped his face in his hands.

Ripton went to the window, repeating energetically for his comfort:  “It’s because you’ve got a fool for your friend!”

Sombre grew the street they had last night aroused.  The sun was buried alive in cloud.  Ripton saw himself no more in the opposite window.  He watched the deplorable objects passing on the pavement.  His aristocratic visions had gone like his breakfast.  Beauty had been struck down by his egregious folly, and there he stood—­a wretch!

Richard came to him:  “Don’t mumble on like that, Rip!” he said.  “Nobody blames you.”

“Ah! you’re very kind, Richard,” interposed the wretch, moved at the face of misery he beheld.

“Listen to me, Rip!  I shall take her home to-night.  Yes!  If she’s happier away from me!—­do you think me a brute, Ripton?  Rather than have her shed a tear, I’d!—­I’ll take her home to-night!”

Ripton suggested that it was sudden; adding from his larger experience, people perhaps might talk.

The lover could not understand what they should talk about, but he said:  “If I give him who came for her yesterday the clue?  If no one sees or hears of me, what can they say?  O Rip!  I’ll give her up.  I’m wrecked for ever!  What of that?  Yes—­let them take her!  The world in arms should never have torn her from me, but when she cries—­Yes! all’s over.  I’ll find him at once.”

He searched in out-of-the-way corners for the hat of resolve.  Ripton looked on, wretcheder than ever.

The idea struck him:—­“Suppose, Richard, she doesn’t want to go?”

It was a moment when, perhaps, one who sided with parents and guardians and the old wise world, might have inclined them to pursue their righteous wretched course, and have given small Cupid a smack and sent him home to his naughty Mother.  Alas!(it is The Pilgrim’s Scrip interjecting) women are the born accomplices of mischief!  In bustles Mrs. Berry to clear away the refection, and finds the two knights helmed, and sees, though ’tis dusk, that they wear doubtful brows, and guesses bad things for her dear God Hymen in a twinkling.

“Dear! dear!” she exclaimed, “and neither of you eaten a scrap!  And there’s my dear young lady off into the prettiest sleep you ever see!”

“Ha?” cried the lover, illuminated.

“Soft as a baby!” Mrs. Berry averred.  “I went to look at her this very moment, and there’s not a bit of trouble in her breath.  It come and it go like the sweetest regular instrument ever made.  The Black Ox haven’t trod on her foot yet!  Most like it was the air of London.  But only fancy, if you had called in a doctor!  Why, I shouldn’t have let her take any of his quackery.  Now, there!”

Ripton attentively observed his chief, and saw him doff his hat with a curious caution, and peer into its recess, from which, during Mrs. Berry’s speech, he drew forth a little glove—­dropped there by some freak of chance.