“That’s one bit o’ lime on your wings, my bird.  History, indeed!  History to a young married lovely woman alone in the dark! a pretty History!  Why, I know that man’s name, my dear.  He’s a notorious living rake, that Lord Montfalcon.  No woman’s safe with him.”

“Ah, but he hasn’t deceived me, Mrs. Berry.  He has not pretended he was good.”

“More’s his art,” quoth the experienced dame.  “So you read History together in the dark; my dear!”

“I was unwell to-night, Mrs. Berry.  I wanted him not to see my face.  Look! there’s the book open ready for him when the candles come in.  And now, you dear kind darling old thing, let me kiss you for coming to me.  I do love you.  Talk of other things.”

“So we will,” said Mrs. Berry softening to Lucy’s caresses.  “So let us.  A nobleman, indeed, alone with a young wife in the dark, and she sich a beauty!  I say this shall be put a stop to now and henceforth, on the spot it shall!  He won’t meneuvele Bessy Berry with his arts.  There!  I drop him.  I’m dyin’ for a cup o’ tea, my dear.”

Lucy got up to ring the bell, and as Mrs. Berry, incapable of quite dropping him, was continuing to say:  “Let him go and boast I kiss him; he ain’t nothin’ to be ’shamed of in a chaste woman’s kiss—­unawares—­which men don’t get too often in their lives, I can assure ’em;”—­her eye surveyed Lucy’s figure.

Lo, when Lucy returned to her, Mrs. Berry surrounded her with her arms, and drew her into feminine depths.  “Oh, you blessed!” she cried in most meaning tone, “you good, lovin’, proper little wife, you!”

“What is it, Mrs. Berry!” lisps Lucy, opening the most innocent blue eyes.

“As if I couldn’t see, you pet!  It was my flurry blinded me, or I’d ’a marked ye the fast shock.  Thinkin’ to deceive me!”

Mrs. Berry’s eyes spoke generations.  Lucy’s wavered; she coloured all over, and hid her face on the bounteous breast that mounted to her.

“You’re a sweet one,” murmured the soft woman, patting her back, and rocking her.  “You’re a rose, you are! and a bud on your stalk.  Haven’t told a word to your husband, my dear?” she asked quickly.

Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.

“That’s right.  We’ll give him a surprise; let it come all at once on him, and thinks he—­losin’ breath ‘I’m a father!’ Nor a hint even you haven’t give him?”

Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.

“Oh! you are a sweet one,” said Bessy Berry, and rocked her more closely and lovingly.

Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which let all of male persuasion retire a space nothing under one mile.