mistake.  But you were married—­a boy:  you knew nothing of the world, little of yourself.  To save you in after-life—­for there is a period when mature men and women who have married young are more impelled to temptation than in youth,—­though not so exposed to it,—­to save you, I say, I decreed that you should experience self-denial and learn something of your fellows of both sexes, before settling into a state that must have been otherwise precarious, however excellent the woman who is your mate.  My System with you would have been otherwise imperfect, and you would have felt the effects of it.  It is over now.  You are a man.  The dangers to which your nature was open are, I trust, at an end.  I wish you to be happy, and I give you both my blessing, and pray God to conduct and strengthen you both.”

Sir Austin’s mind was unconscious of not having spoken devoutly.  True or not, his words were idle to his son:  his talk of dangers over, and happiness, mockery.

Richard coldly took his father’s extended hand.

“We will go to her,” said the baronet.  “I will leave you at her door.”

Not moving:  looking fixedly at his father with a hard face on which the colour rushed, Richard said:  “A husband who has been unfaithful to his wife may go to her there, sir?”

It was horrible, it was cruel:  Richard knew that.  He wanted no advice on such a matter, having fully resolved what to do.  Yesterday he would have listened to his father, and blamed himself alone, and done what was to be done humbly before God and her:  now in the recklessness of his misery he had as little pity for any other soul as for his own.  Sir Austin’s brows were deep drawn down.

“What did you say, Richard?”

Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this—­the worst he could hear--this that he had dreaded once and doubted, and smoothed over, and cast aside—­could it be?

Richard said:  “I told you all but the very words when we last parted.  What else do you think would have kept me from her?”

Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried:  “What brings you to her now?”

“That will be between us two,” was the reply.

Sir Austin fell into his chair.  Meditation was impossible.  He spoke from a wrathful heart:  “You will not dare to take her without”—­

“No, sir,” Richard interrupted him, “I shall not.  Have no fear.”

“Then you did not love your wife?”

“Did I not?” A smile passed faintly over Richard’s face.

“Did you care so much for this—­this other person?”

“So much?  If you ask me whether I had affection for her, I can say I had none.”

O base human nature!  Then how? then why?  A thousand questions rose in the baronet’s mind.  Bessy Berry could have answered them every one.

“Poor child! poor child!” he apostrophized Lucy, pacing the room.  Thinking of her, knowing her deep love for his son—­her true forgiving heart—­it seemed she should be spared this misery.