“Oh!” cried Lucy, “that takes my last hope away.  I thought he had gone to his father.”  She burst into fresh tears.

Mrs. Berry paused, disturbed.

“Belike he’s travellin’ after him,” she suggested.

“Fifteen days, Mrs. Berry!”

“Ah, fifteen weeks, my dear, after sieh a man as that.  He’s a regular meteor, is Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey.  Well, so hark you here.  I says to myself, that knows him—­for I did think my babe was in his natural nest—­I says, the bar’net’ll never write for you both to come up and beg forgiveness, so down I’ll go and fetch you up.  For there was your mistake, my dear, ever to leave your husband to go away from ye one hour in a young marriage.  It’s dangerous, it’s mad, it’s wrong, and it’s only to be righted by your obeyin’ of me, as I commands it:  for I has my fits, though I am a soft ’un.  Obey me, and ye’ll be happy tomorrow—­or the next to it.”

Lucy was willing to see comfort.  She was weary of her self-inflicted martyrdom, and glad to give herself up to somebody else’s guidance utterly.

“But why does he not write to me, Mrs. Berry?”

“’Cause, ’cause—­who can tell the why of men, my dear?  But that he love ye faithful, I’ll swear.  Haven’t he groaned in my arms that he couldn’t come to ye?—­weak wretch!  Hasn’t he swore how he loved ye to me, poor young man!  But this is your fault, my sweet.  Yes, it be.  You should ’a followed my ‘dvice at the fust—­’stead o’ going into your ’eroics about this and t’other.”  Here Mrs. Berry poured forth fresh sentences on matrimony, pointed especially at young couples.  “I should ’a been a fool if I hadn’t suffered myself,” she confessed, “so I’ll thank my Berry if I makes you wise in season.”

Lucy smoothed her ruddy plump cheeks, and gazed up affectionately into the soft woman’s kind brown eyes.  Endearing phrases passed from mouth to mouth.  And as she gazed Lucy blushed, as one who has something very secret to tell, very sweet, very strange, but cannot quite bring herself to speak it.

“Well! these’s three men in my life I kissed,” said Mrs. Berry, too much absorbed in her extraordinary adventure to notice the young wife’s struggling bosom, “three men, and one a nobleman!  He’ve got more whisker than my Berry, I wonder what the man thought.  Ten to one he’ll think, now, I was glad o’ my chance—­they’re that vain, whether they’s lords or commons.  How was I to know?  I nat’ral thinks none but her husband’d sit in that chair.  Ha! and in the dark? and alone with ye?” Mrs. Berry hardened her eyes, “and your husband away?  What do this mean?  Tell to me, child, what it mean his bein’ here alone without ere a candle?”

“Lord Mountfalcon is the only friend I have here,” said Lucy.  “He is very kind.  He comes almost every evening.”

“Lord Montfalcon—­that his name!” Mrs. Berry exclaimed.  “I been that flurried by the man, I didn’t mind it at first.  He come every evenin’, and your husband out o’ sight!  My goodness me! it’s gettin’ worse and worse.  And what do he come for, now, ma’am?  Now tell me candid what ye do together here in the dark of an evenin’.”