The maid did as she was told, and Mrs. Berry, wishing first to see herself as she was, mutely accosted the looking-glass, and tried to look a very little better.  She dropped a shawl on Ripton and was settled, smoothing her agitation when her visitor was announced.

The gentleman was Adrian Harley.  An interview with Tom Bakewell had put him on the track, and now a momentary survey of the table, and its white-vestured cake, made him whistle.

Mrs. Berry plaintively begged him to do her the favour to be seated.

“A fine morning, ma’am,” said Adrian.

“It have been!” Mrs. Berry answered, glancing over her shoulder at the window, and gulping as if to get her heart down from her mouth.

“A very fine Spring,” pursued Adrian, calmly anatomizing her countenance.

Mrs. Berry smothered an adjective to “weather” on a deep sigh.  Her wretchedness was palpable.  In proportion to it, Adrian waned cheerful and brisk.  He divined enough of the business to see that there was some strange intelligence to be fished out of the culprit who sat compressing hysterics before him; and as he was never more in his element than when he had a sinner, and a repentant prostrate abject sinner in hand, his affable countenance might well deceive poor Berry.

“I presume these are Mr. Thompson’s lodgings?” he remarked, with a look at the table.

Mrs. Berry’s head and the whites of her eyes informed him that they were not Mr. Thompson’s lodgings.

“No?” said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye about him.  “Mr. Feverel is out, I suppose?”

A convulsive start at the name, and two corroborating hands dropped on her knees, formed Mrs. Berry’s reply.

“Mr. Feverel’s man,” continued Adrian, “told me I should be certain to find him here.  I thought he would be with his friend, Mr. Thompson.  I’m too late, I perceive.  Their entertainment is over.  I fancy you have been having a party of them here, ma’am?—­a bachelors’ breakfast!”

In the presence of that cake this observation seemed to mask an irony so shrewd that Mrs. Berry could barely contain herself.  She felt she must speak.  Making her face as deplorably propitiating as she could, she began: 

“Sir, may I beg for to know your name?”

Mr. Harley accorded her request.

Groaning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued: 

“And you are Mr. Harley, that was—­oh! and you’ve come for Mr.?”—­

Mr. Richard Feverel was the gentleman Mr. Harley had come for.

“Oh! and it’s no mistake, and he’s of Raynham Abbey?” Mrs. Berry inquired.

Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred there.

“His father’s Sir Austin?” wailed the black-satin bunch from behind her handkerchief.

Adrian verified Richard’s descent.

“Oh, then, what have I been and done!” she cried, and stared blankly at her visitor.  “I been and married my baby!  I been and married the bread out of my own mouth.  O Mr. Harley!  Mr. Harley!  I knew you when you was a boy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you.  And it’s my softness that’s my ruin, for I never can resist a man’s asking.  Look at that cake, Mr. Harley!”