couple come together, and be wholesome in spite of him, I say; and then give him time to come round, just like a woman; and round he’ll come, and give ’em his blessin’, and we shall know we’ve made him comfortable.  He’s angry because matrimony have come between him and his son, and he, woman-like, he’s wantin’ to treat what is as if it isn’t.  But matrimony’s a holier than him.  It began long long before him, and it’s be hoped will endoor longs the time after, if the world’s not coming to rack—­wishin’ him no harm.”

Now Mrs. Berry only put Lady Blandish’s thoughts in bad English.  The lady took upon herself seriously to advise Richard to send for his wife.  He wrote, bidding her come.  Lucy, however, had wits, and inexperienced wits are as a little knowledge.  In pursuance of her sage plan to make the family feel her worth, and to conquer the members of it one by one, she had got up a correspondence with Adrian, whom it tickled.  Adrian constantly assured her all was going well:  time would heal the wound if both the offenders had the fortitude to be patient:  he fancied he saw signs of the baronet’s relenting:  they must do nothing to arrest those favourable symptoms.  Indeed the wise youth was languidly seeking to produce them.  He wrote, and felt, as Lucy’s benefactor.  So Lucy replied to her husband a cheerful rigmarole he could make nothing of, save that she was happy in hope, and still had fears.  Then Mrs. Berry trained her fist to indite a letter to her bride.  Her bride answered it by saying she trusted to time.  “You poor marter” Mrs. Berry wrote back, “I know what your sufferin’s be.  They is the only kind a wife should never hide from her husband.  He thinks all sorts of things if she can abide being away.  And you trusting to time, why it’s like trusting not to catch cold out of your natural clothes.”  There was no shaking Lucy’s firmness.

Richard gave it up.  He began to think that the life lying behind him was the life of a fool.  What had he done in it?  He had burnt a rick and got married!  He associated the two acts of his existence.  Where was the hero he was to have carved out of Tom Bakewell!—­a wretch he had taught to lie and chicane:  and for what?  Great heavens! how ignoble did a flash from the light of his aspirations make his marriage appear!  The young man sought amusement.  He allowed his aunt to drag him into society, and sick of that he made late evening calls on Mrs. Mount, oblivious of the purpose he had in visiting her at all.  Her man-like conversation, which he took for honesty, was a refreshing change on fair lips.

“Call me Bella:  I’ll call you Dick,” said she.  And it came to be Bella and Dick between them.  No mention of Bella occurred in Richard’s letters to Lucy.

Mrs. Mount spoke quite openly of herself.  “I pretend to be no better than I am,” she said, “and I know I’m no worse than many a woman who holds her head high.”  To back this she told him stories of blooming dames of good repute, and poured a little social sewerage into his ears.