The person who betrayed most agitation was, Mrs. Doria.  She held close to him, and eagerly studied his face and every movement, as one accustomed to masks.  “You are pale, Richard?” He pleaded exhaustion.  “What detained you, dear?” “Business,” he said.  She drew him imperiously apart from the others.  “Richard! is it over?” He asked what she meant.  “The dreadful duel, Richard.”  He looked darkly.  “Is it over? is it done, Richard?” Getting no immediate answer, she continued—­ and such was her agitation that the words were shaken by pieces from her mouth:  “Don’t pretend not to understand me, Richard!  Is it over?  Are you going to die the death of my child—­Clare’s death?  Is not one in a family enough?  Think of your dear young wife—­we love her so!—­your child!—­your father!  Will you kill us all?”

Mrs. Doria had chanced to overhear a trifle of Ripton’s communication to Adrian, and had built thereon with the dark forces of a stricken soul.

Wondering how this woman could have divined it, Richard calmly said:  “It’s arranged—­the matter you allude to.”

“Indeed!—­truly, dear?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me”—­but he broke away from her, saying:  “You shall hear the particulars to-morrow,” and she, not alive to double meaning just then, allowed him to leave her.

He had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and called for food, but he would take only dry bread and claret, which was served on a tray in the library.  He said, without any show of feeling, that he must eat before he saw the young hope of Raynham:  so there he sat, breaking bread, and eating great mouthfuls, and washing them down with wine, talking of what they would.  His father’s studious mind felt itself years behind him, he was so completely altered.  He had the precision of speech, the bearing of a man of thirty.  Indeed he had all that the necessity for cloaking an infinite misery gives.  But let things be as they might, he was, there.  For one night in his life Sir Austin’s perspective of the future was bounded by the night.

“Will your go to your wife now?” he had asked and Richard had replied with a strange indifference.  The baronet thought it better that their meeting should be private, and sent word for Lucy to wait upstairs.  The others perceived that father and son should now be left alone.  Adrian went up to him, and said:  “I can no longer witness this painful sight, so Good-night, Sir Famish!  You may cheat yourself into the belief that you’ve made a meal, but depend upon it your progeny—­and it threatens to be numerous—­will cry aloud and rue the day.  Nature never forgives!  A lost dinner can never be replaced!  Good-night, my dear boy.  And here—­ oblige me by taking this,” he handed Richard the enormous envelope containing what he had written that evening.  “Credentials!” he exclaimed humorously, slapping Richard on the shoulder.  Ripton heard also the words “propagator—­species,” but had no idea of their import.  The wise youth looked:  You see we’ve made matters all right for you here, and quitted the room on that unusual gleam of earnestness.