“Ah! hum!” mumbled Adrian.

“You remember my telling you?” Richard was earnest to hear her exonerated.

“Pleaded and implored, my dear boy?  Oh, no doubt she did.  Where’s the lass that doesn’t.”

“Call my wife by another name, if you please.”

“The generic title can’t be cancelled because of your having married one of the body, my son.”

“She did all she could to persuade me to wait!” emphasized Richard.

Adrian shook his head with a deplorable smile.

“Come, come, my good Ricky; not all! not all!”

Richard bellowed:  “What more could she have done?”

“She could have shaved her head, for instance.”

This happy shaft did stick.  With a furious exclamation Richard shot in front, Adrian following him; and asking him (merely to have his assumption verified), whether he did not think she might have shaved her head? and, presuming her to have done so, whether, in candour, he did not think he would have waited—­at least till she looked less of a rank lunatic?

After a minute or so, the wise youth was but a fly buzzing about Richard’s head.  Three weeks of separation from Lucy, and an excitement deceased, caused him to have soft yearnings for the dear lovely home-face.  He told Adrian it was his intention to go down that night.  Adrian immediately became serious.  He was at a loss what to invent to detain him, beyond the stale fiction that his father was coming to-morrow.  He rendered homage to the genius of woman in these straits.  “My aunt,” he thought, “would have the lie ready; and not only that, but she would take care it did its work.”

At this juncture the voice of a cavalier in the Row hailed them, proving to be the Honourable Peter Brayder, Lord Mountfalcon’s parasite.  He greeted them very cordially; and Richard, remembering some fun they had in the Island, asked him to dine with them; postponing his return till the next day.  Lucy was his.  It was even sweet to dally with the delight of seeing her.

The Hon. Peter was one who did honour to the body he belonged to.  Though not so tall as a west of London footman, he was as shapely; and he had a power of making his voice insinuating, or arrogant, as it suited the exigencies of his profession.  He had not a rap of money in the world; yet he rode a horse, lived high, expended largely.  The world said that the Hon. Peter was salaried by his Lordship, and that, in common with that of Parasite, he exercised the ancient companion profession.  This the world said, and still smiled at the Hon. Peter; for he was an engaging fellow, and where he went not Lord Mountfalcon would not go.