“Well, and where’s my—­where’s Mr. Richard? yer husband, my dear?” Mrs. Berry turned from her tale to question.

“Did you expect to see him here?” said Lucy, in a broken voice.

“And where else, my love? since he haven’t been seen in London a whole fortnight.”

Lucy did not speak.

“We will dismiss the Emperor Julian till to-morrow, I think,” said Lord Mountfalcon, rising and bowing.

Lucy gave him her hand with mute thanks.  He touched it distantly, embraced Mrs. Berry in a farewell bow, and was shown out of the house by Tom Bakewell.

The moment he was gone, Mrs. Berry threw up her arms.  “Did ye ever know sich a horrid thing to go and happen to a virtuous woman!” she exclaimed.  “I could cry at it, I could!  To be goin’ and kissin’ a strange hairy man!  Oh dear me! what’s cornin’ next, I wonder?  Whiskers! thinks I—­for I know the touch o’ whiskers—­’t ain’t like other hair—­what! have he growed a crop that sudden, I says to myself; and it flashed on me I been and made a awful mistake! and the lights come in, and I see that great hairy man—­beggin’ his pardon—­nobleman, and if I could ’a dropped through the floor out o’ sight o’ men, drat ’em! they’re al’ays in the way, that they are!”—­

“Mrs. Berry,” Lucy checked her, “did you expect to find him here?”

“Askin’ that solemn?” retorted Berry.  “What him? your husband?  O’ course I did! and you got him—­somewheres hid.”

“I have not heard from my husband for fifteen days,” said Lucy, and her tears rolled heavily off her cheeks.

“Not heer from him!—­fifteen days!” Berry echoed.

“O Mrs. Berry! dear kind Mrs. Berry! have you no news? nothing to tell me!  I’ve borne it so long.  They’re cruel to me, Mrs. Berry.  Oh, do you know if I have offended him—­my husband?  While he wrote I did not complain.  I could live on his letters for years.  But not to hear from him!  To think I have ruined him, and that he repents!  Do they want to take him from me?  Do they want me dead?  O Mrs. Berry!  I’ve had no one to speak out my heart to all this time, and I cannot, cannot help crying, Mrs. Berry!”

Mrs. Berry was inclined to be miserable at what she heard from Lucy’s lips, and she was herself full of dire apprehension; but it was never this excellent creature’s system to be miserable in company.  The sight of a sorrow that was not positive, and could not refer to proof, set her resolutely the other way.

“Fiddle-faddle,” she said.  “I’d like to see him repent!  He won’t find anywheres a beauty like his own dear little wife, and he know it.  Now, look you here, my dear—­you blessed weepin’ pet—­the man that could see ye with that hair of yours there in ruins, and he backed by the law, and not rush into your arms and hold ye squeezed for life, he ain’t got much man in him, I say; and no one can say that of my babe!  I was sayin’, look here, to comfort ye—­oh, why, to be sure he’ve got some surprise for ye.  And so’ve I, my lamb!  Hark, now!  His father’ve come to town, like a good reasonable man at last, to u-nite ye both, and bring your bodies together, as your hearts is, for everlastin’.  Now ain’t that news?”