Adrian followed her directions quite coolly.  “Wedding-cake, ma’am!” he said.

“Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!”

“Did you make it yourself, ma’am?”

The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry and upset that train of symbolic representations by which she was seeking to make him guess the catastrophe and spare her the furnace of confession.

“I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley,” she replied.  “It’s a bought cake, and I’m a lost woman.  Little I dreamed when I had him in my arms a baby that I should some day be marrying him out of my own house!  I little dreamed that!  Oh, why did he come to me!  Don’t you remember his old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that went away so sudden, and no fault of hers, Mr. Harley!  The very mornin’ after the night you got into Mr. Benson’s cellar, and got so tipsy on his Madeary—­I remember it as clear as yesterday!—­and Mr. Benson was that angry he threatened to use the whip to you, and I helped put you to bed.  I’m that very woman.”

Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless youthful life.

“Well, ma’am! well?” he said.  He would bring her to the furnace.

“Won’t you see it all, kind sir?” Mrs. Berry appealed to him in pathetic dumb show.

Doubtless by this time Adrian did see it all, and was mentally cursing at Folly, and reckoning the immediate consequences, but he looked uninstructed, his peculiar dimple-smile was undisturbed, his comfortable full-bodied posture was the same.  “Well, ma’am?” he spurred her on.

Mrs. Berry burst forth:  “It were done this mornin’, Mr. Harley, in the church, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to, by licence.”

Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony.  “Oh!” he said, like one who is as hard as facts, and as little to be moved:  “Somebody was married this morning; was it Mr. Thompson, or Mr. Feverel?”

Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton, and removed the shawl from him, saying:  “Do he look like a new married bridegroom, Mr. Harley?”

Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic gravity.

“This young gentleman was at church this morning?” he asked.

“Oh! quite reasonable and proper then,” Mrs. Berry begged him to understand.

“Of course, ma’am.”  Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid inanimate limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth queerly.  “You were all reasonable and proper, ma’am.  The principal male performer, then, is my cousin, Mr. Feverel?  He was married by you, this morning, by licence at your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty breakfast, and left intoxicated.”

Mrs. Berry flew out.  “He never drink a drop, sir.  A more moderate young gentleman you never see.  Oh! don’t ye think that now, Mr. Harley.  He was as upright and master of his mind as you be.”

“Ay!” the wise youth nodded thanks to her for the comparison, “I mean the other form of intoxication.”