“What aspect do you like for your bedroom?—­East?” said the baronet.

Lucy was asking herself wonderingly:  “Am I to stay?”

“Perhaps you had better take to Richard’s room at once,” he pursued.  “You have the Lobourne valley there and a good morning air, and will feel more at home.”

Lucy’s colour mounted.  Mrs. Berry gave a short cough, as one who should say, “The day is ours!” Undoubtedly—­strange as it was to think it—­the fortress was carried.

“Lucy is rather tired,” said Austin, and to hear her Christian name thus bravely spoken brought grateful dew to her eyes.

The baronet was about to touch the bell.  “But have you come alone?” he asked.

At this Mrs. Berry came forward.  Not immediately:  it seemed to require effort for her to move, and when she was within the region of the lamp, her agitation could not escape notice.  The blissful bundle shook in her arms.

“By the way, what is he to me?” Austin inquired generally as he went and unveiled the younger hope of Raynham.  “My relationship is not so defined as yours, sir.”

An observer might have supposed that the baronet peeped at his grandson with the courteous indifference of one who merely wished to compliment the mother of anybody’s child.

“I really think he’s like Richard,” Austin laughed.  Lucy looked:  I am sure he is!

“As like as one to one,” Mrs. Berry murmured feebly; but Grandpapa not speaking she thought it incumbent on her to pluck up.  “And he’s as healthy as his father was, Sir Austin—­spite o’ the might ’a beens.  Reg’lar as the clock!  We never want a clock since he come.  We knows the hour o’ the day, and of the night.”

“You nurse him yourself, of course?” the baronet spoke to Lucy, and was satisfied on that point.

Mrs. Berry was going to display his prodigious legs.  Lucy, fearing the consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to wake him.  “’T’d take a deal to do that,” said Mrs. Berry, and harped on Master Richard’s health and the small wonder it was that he enjoyed it, considering the superior quality of his diet, and the lavish attentions of his mother, and then suddenly fell silent on a deep sigh.

“He looks healthy,” said the baronet, “but I am not a judge of babies.”

Thus, having capitulated, Raynham chose to acknowledge its new commandant, who was now borne away, under the directions of the housekeeper, to occupy the room Richard had slept in when an infant.

Austin cast no thought on his success.  The baronet said:  “She is extremely well-looking.”  He replied:  “A person you take to at once.”  There it ended.

But a much more animated colloquy was taking place aloft, where Lucy and Mrs. Berry sat alone.  Lucy expected her to talk about the reception they had met with, and the house, and the peculiarities of the rooms, and the solid happiness that seemed in store.  Mrs. Berry all the while would persist in consulting the looking-glass.  Her first distinct answer was, “My dear! tell me candid, how do I look?”