Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry had expended upon this breakfast, and why?  There is one who comes to all feasts that have their basis in Folly, whom criminals of trained instinct are careful to provide against:  who will speak, and whose hateful voice must somehow be silenced while the feast is going on.  This personage is The Philosopher.  Mrs. Berry knew him.  She knew that he would come.  She provided against him in the manner she thought most efficacious:  that is, by cheating her eyes and intoxicating her conscience with the due and proper glories incident to weddings where fathers dilate, mothers collapse, and marriage settlements are flourished on high by the family lawyer:  and had there been no show of the kind to greet her on her return from the church, she would, and she foresaw she would, have stared at squalor and emptiness, and repented her work.  The Philosopher would have laid hold of her by the ear, and called her bad names.  Entrenched behind a breakfast-table so legitimately adorned, Mrs. Berry defied him.  In the presence of that cake he dared not speak above a whisper.  And there were wines to drown him in, should he still think of protesting; fiery wines, and cool:  claret sent purposely by the bridegroom for the delectation of his friend.

For one good hour, therefore, the labour of many hours kept him dumb.  Ripton was fortifying himself so as to forget him altogether, and the world as well, till the next morning.  Ripton was excited, overdone with delight.  He had already finished one bottle, and listened, pleasantly flushed, to his emphatic and more abstemious chief.  He had nothing to do but to listen, and to drink.  The hero would not allow him to shout Victory! or hear a word of toasts; and as, from the quantity of oil poured on it, his eloquence was becoming a natural force in his bosom, the poor fellow was afflicted with a sort of elephantiasis of suppressed emotion.  At times he half-rose from his chair, and fell vacuously into it again; or he chuckled in the face of weighty, severely-worded instructions; tapped his chest, stretched his arms, yawned, and in short behaved so singularly that Richard observed it, and said:  “On my soul, I don’t think you know a word I’m saying.”

“Every word, Ricky!” Ripton spirted through the opening.  “I’m going down to your governor, and tell him:  Sir Austin!  Here’s your only chance of being a happy father—­no, no!—­Oh! don’t you fear me, Ricky!  I shall talk the old gentleman over.”

His chief said: 

“Look here.  You had better not go down to-night.  Go down the first thing to-morrow, by the six o’clock train.  Give him my letter.  Listen to me—­give him my letter, and don’t speak a word till he speaks.  His eyebrows will go up and down, he won’t say much.  I know him.  If he asks you about her, don’t be a fool, but say what you think of her sensibly”—­

No cork could hold in Ripton when she was alluded to.  He shouted:  “She’s an angel!”