words had
just reached his wits.

"Why do you laugh, young man?" she inquired, familiar and motherly on
account of his condition.

Ripton laughed louder, and caught his chest on the edge of the table and
his nose on a chicken. "That's goo'!" he said, recovering, and rocking
under Mrs. Berry's eyes. "No friend!"

"I did not say, no friend," she remarked. "I said, no one; meanin', I
know not where for to send it to."

Ripton's response to this was: You put a Griffin on that cake.
Wheatsheaves each side."

"His crest?" Mrs. Berry said sweetly.

"Oldest baronetcy 'n England!" waved Ripton.

"Yes?" Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.

"You think he's Richards. We're oblige' be very close. And she's the most
lovely!--If I hear man say thing 'gainst her."

"You needn't for to cry over her, young man," said Mrs. Berry. "I wanted
for to drink their right healths by their right names, and then go about
my day's work, and I do hope you won't keep me."

Ripton stood bolt upright at her words.

"You do?" he said, and filling a bumper he with cheerfully vinous
articulation and glibness of tongue proposed the health of Richard and
Lucy Feverel, of Raynham Abbey! and that mankind should not require an
expeditious example of the way to accept the inspiring toast, he drained
his bumper at a gulp. It finished him. The farthing rushlight of his
reason leapt and expired. He tumbled to the sofa and there stretched.

Some minutes subsequent to Ripton's signalization of his devotion to the
bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the room to say that a gentleman
was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had departed, and found
her mistress with a tottering wineglass in her hand, exhibiting every
symptom of unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth gaped, as if the fell creditor
had her by the swallow. She ejaculated with horrible exultation that she
had been and done it, as her disastrous aspect seemed to testify, and her
evident, but inexplicable, access of misery induced the sympathetic maid
to tender those caressing words that were all Mrs. Berry wanted to go off
into the self-caressing fit without delay; and she had already given the
preluding demoniac ironic outburst, when the maid called heaven to
witness that the gentleman would hear her; upon which Mrs. Berry
violently controlled her bosom, and ordered that he should be shown
upstairs instantly to see her the wretch she was. She repeated the
injunction.

The maid did as she was