"

"And would do your best to rectify the mischief--eh, ma'am?"

"Indeed, and indeed, sir, I would," she protested solemnly.

"--As, of course, you should--knowing the family. Where may these
lunatics have gone to spend the Moon?"

Mrs. Berry swimmingly replied: "To the Isle--I don't quite know, sir!"
she snapped the indication short, and jumped out of the pit she had
fallen into. Repentant as she might be, those dears should not be pursued
and cruelly balked of their young bliss! "To-morrow, if you please, Mr.
Harley: not to-day!"

"A pleasant spot," Adrian observed, smiling at his easy prey.

By a measurement of dates he discovered that the bridegroom had brought
his bride to the house on the day he had quitted Raynham, and this was
enough to satisfy Adrian's mind that there had been concoction and
chicanery. Chance, probably, had brought him to the old woman: chance
certainly had not brought him to the young one.

"Very well, ma'am," he said, in answer to her petitions for his
favourable offices with Sir Austin in behalf of her little pension and
the bridal pair, "I will tell him you were only a blind agent in the
affair, being naturally soft, and that you trust he will bless the
consummation. He will be in town to-morrow morning; but one of you two
must see him to-night. An emetic kindly administered will set our friend
here on his legs. A bath and a clean shirt, and he might go. I don't see
why your name should appear at all. Brush him up, and send him to
Bellingham by the seven o'clock train. He will find his way to Raynham;
he knows the neighbourhood best in the dark. Let him go and state the
case. Remember, one of you must go."

With this fair prospect of leaving a choice of a perdition between the
couple of unfortunates, for them to fight and lose all their virtues
over, Adrian said, "Good morning."

Mrs. Berry touchingly arrested him. "You won't refuse a piece of his
cake, Mr. Harley?"

"Oh, dear, no, ma'am," Adrian turned to the cake with alacrity. "I shall
claim a very large piece. Richard has a great many friends who will
rejoice to eat his wedding-cake. Cut me a fair quarter, Mrs. Berry. Put
it in paper, if you please. I shall be delighted to carry it to them, and
apportion it equitably according to their several degrees of
relationship."

Mrs. Berry cut the cake. Somehow, as she sliced through it, the sweetness
and hapless innocence of the bride was presented to her, and she launched
into eu