Mrs. Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing of the child, which showed that no one was comforting it, and failing to get any answer to her applications for admittance, she made bold to enter.  There she saw Lucy, the child in her lap, sitting on the floor senseless:—­she had taken it from its sleep and tried to follow her husband with it as her strongest appeal to him, and had fainted.

“Oh my! oh my!” Mrs. Berry moaned, “and I just now thinkin’ they was so happy!”

Warming and caressing the poor infant, she managed by degrees to revive Lucy, and heard what had brought her to that situation.

“Go to his father,” said Mrs. Berry.  “Ta-te-tiddle-te-heighty-O!  Go, my love, and every horse in Raynham shall be out after ’m.  This is what men brings us to!  Heighty-oighty-iddlety-Ah!  Or you take blessed baby, and I’ll go.”

The baronet himself knocked at the door.  “What is this?” he said.  “I heard a noise and a step descend.”

“It’s Mr. Richard have gone, Sir Austin! have gone from his wife and babe!  Rum-te-um-te-iddledy—­Oh, my goodness! what sorrow’s come on us!” and Mrs. Berry wept, and sang to baby, and baby cried vehemently, and Lucy, sobbing, took him and danced him and sang to him with drawn lips and tears dropping over him.  And if the Scientific Humanist to the day of his death forgets the sight of those two poor true women jigging on their wretched hearts to calm the child, he must have very little of the human in him.

There was no more sleep for Raynham that night.

CHAPTER XLV

“His ordeal is over.  I have just come from his room and seen him bear the worst that could be.  Return at once—­he has asked for you.  I can hardly write intelligibly, but I will tell you what we know.

“Two days after the dreadful night when he left us, his father heard from Ralph Morton.  Richard had fought a duel in France with Lord Mountfalcon, and was lying wounded at a hamlet on the coast.  His father started immediately with his poor wife, and I followed in company with his aunt and his child.  The wound was not dangerous.  He was shot in the side somewhere, but the ball injured no vital part.  We thought all would be well.  Oh! how sick I am of theories, and Systems, and the pretensions of men!  There was his son lying all but dead, and the man was still unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of.  I could hardly bear the sight of his composure.  I shall hate the name of Science till the day I die.  Give me nothing but commonplace unpretending people!