She made other and deeper dives into the little heart, but though she drew up pearls, they were not of the kind she searched for.  The one fact that hung as a fruit upon her tree of Love, Lucy had given her; she would not, in fealty to her lover, reveal its growth and history, however sadly she yearned to pour out all to this dear old Mother Confessor.

Her conduct drove Mrs. Berry from the rosy to the autumnal view of matrimony, generally heralded by the announcement that it is a lottery.

“And when you see your ticket,” said Mrs. Berry, “you shan’t know whether it’s a prize or a blank.  And, Lord knows! some go on thinking it’s a prize when it turns on ’em and tears ’em.  I’m one of the blanks, my dear!  I drew a blank in Berry.  He was a black Berry to me, my dear!  Smile away! he truly was, and I a-prizin’ him as proud as you can conceive!  My dear!” Mrs. Berry pressed her hands flat on her apron.  “We hadn’t been a three months man and wife, when that man—­it wasn’t the honeymoon, which some can’t say—­that man—­Yes! he kicked me.  His wedded wife he kicked!  Ah!” she sighed to Lucy’s large eyes, “I could have borne that.  A blow don’t touch the heart,” the poor creature tapped her sensitive side.  “I went on loving of him, for I’m a soft one.  Tall as a Grenadier he is, and when out of service grows his moustache.  I used to call him my body-guardsman like a Queen!  I flattered him like the fools we women are.  For, take my word for it, my dear, there’s nothing here below so vain as a man!  That I know.  But I didn’t deserve it....  I’m a superior cook ....  I did not deserve that noways.”  Mrs. Berry thumped her knee, and accentuated up her climax:  “I mended his linen.  I saw to his adornments—­he called his clothes, the bad man!  I was a servant to him, my dear! and there—­it was nine months—­nine months from the day he swear to protect and cherish and that—­nine calendar months, and my gentleman is off with another woman!  Bone of his bone!—­pish!” exclaimed Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over vividly.  “Here’s my ring.  A pretty ornament!  What do it mean?  I’m for tearin’ it off my finger a dozen times in the day.  It’s a symbol?  I call it a tomfoolery for the dead-alive to wear it, that’s a widow and not a widow, and haven’t got a name for what she is in any Dixonary, I’ve looked, my dear, and”—­she spread out her arms—­“Johnson haven’t got a name for me!”

At this impressive woe Mrs. Berry’s voice quavered into sobs.  Lucy spoke gentle words to the poor outcast from Johnson.  The sorrows of Autumn have no warning for April.  The little bride, for all her tender pity, felt happier when she had heard her landlady’s moving tale of the wickedness of man, which cast in bright relief the glory of that one hero who was hers.  Then from a short flight of inconceivable bliss, she fell, shot by one of her hundred Argus-eyed fears.

“O Mrs. Berry!  I’m so young!  Think of me—­only just seventeen!”