Richard had come.  He was under his father’s roof, in the old home that had so soon grown foreign to him.  He stood close to his wife and child.  He might embrace them both:  and now the fulness of his anguish and the madness of the thing he had done smote the young man:  now first he tasted hard earthly misery.

Had not God spoken to him in the tempest?  Had not the finger of heaven directed him homeward?  And he had come:  here he stood:  congratulations were thick in his ears:  the cup of happiness was held to him, and he was invited to drink of it.  Which was the dream? his work for the morrow, or this?  But for a leaden load that he felt like a bullet in his breast, he might have thought the morrow with death sitting on it was the dream.  Yes; he was awake.  Now first the cloud of phantasms cleared away:  he beheld his real life, and the colours of true human joy:  and on the morrow perhaps he was to close his eyes on them.  That leaden bullet dispersed all unrealities.

They stood about him in the hall, his father, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria, Adrian, Ripton; people who had known him long.  They shook his hand:  they gave him greetings he had never before understood the worth of or the meaning.  Now that he did they mocked him.  There was Mrs. Berry in the background bobbing, there was Martin Berry bowing, there was Tom Bakewell grinning.  Somehow he loved the sight of these better.

“Ah, my old Penelope!” he said, breaking through the circle of his relatives to go to her.  “Tom! how are you?”

“Bless ye, my Mr, Richard,” whimpered Mrs. Berry, and whispered, rosily, “all’s agreeable now.  She’s waiting up in bed for ye, like a new-born.”

The person who betrayed most agitation was, Mrs. Doria.  She held close to him, and eagerly studied his face and every movement, as one accustomed to masks.  “You are pale, Richard?” He pleaded exhaustion.  “What detained you, dear?” “Business,” he said.  She drew him imperiously apart from the others.  “Richard! is it over?” He asked what she meant.  “The dreadful duel, Richard.”  He looked darkly.  “Is it over? is it done, Richard?” Getting no immediate answer, she continued—­and such was her agitation that the words were shaken by pieces from her mouth:  “Don’t pretend not to understand me, Richard!  Is it over?  Are you going to die the death of my child—­Clare’s death?  Is not one in a family enough?  Think of your dear young wife—­we love her so!—­your child!—­your father!  Will you kill us all?”

Mrs. Doria had chanced to overhear a trifle of Ripton’s communication to Adrian, and had built thereon with the dark forces of a stricken soul.

Wondering how this woman could have divined it, Richard calmly said:  “It’s arranged—­the matter you allude to.”

“Indeed!—­truly, dear?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me”—­but he broke away from her, saying:  “You shall hear the particulars to-morrow,” and she, not alive to double meaning just then, allowed him to leave her.