for you both to come up
and beg forgiveness, so down I'll go and fetch you up. For there was your
mistake, my dear, ever to leave your husband to go away from ye one hour
in a young marriage. It's dangerous, it's mad, it's wrong, and it's only
to be righted by your obeyin' of me, as I commands it: for I has my fits,
though I am a soft 'un. Obey me, and ye'll be happy tomorrow--or the next
to it."

Lucy was willing to see comfort. She was weary of her self-inflicted
martyrdom, and glad to give herself up to somebody else's guidance
utterly.

"But why does he not write to me, Mrs. Berry?"

"'Cause, 'cause--who can tell the why of men, my dear? But that he love
ye faithful, I'll swear. Haven't he groaned in my arms that he couldn't
come to ye?--weak wretch! Hasn't he swore how he loved ye to me, poor
young man! But this is your fault, my sweet. Yes, it be. You should 'a
followed my 'dvice at the fust--'stead o' going into your 'eroics about
this and t'other." Here Mrs. Berry poured forth fresh sentences on
matrimony, pointed especially at young couples. "I should 'a been a fool
if I hadn't suffered myself," she confessed, "so I'll thank my Berry if I
makes you wise in season."

Lucy smoothed her ruddy plump cheeks, and gazed up affectionately into
the soft woman's kind brown eyes. Endearing phrases passed from mouth to
mouth. And as she gazed Lucy blushed, as one who has something very
secret to tell, very sweet, very strange, but cannot quite bring herself
to speak it.

"Well! these's three men in my life I kissed," said Mrs. Berry, too much
absorbed in her extraordinary adventure to notice the young wife's
struggling bosom, "three men, and one a nobleman! He've got more whisker
than my Berry, I wonder what the man thought. Ten to one he'll think,
now, I was glad o' my chance--they're that vain, whether they's lords or
commons. How was I to know? I nat'ral thinks none but her husband'd sit
in that chair. Ha! and in the dark? and alone with ye?" Mrs. Berry
hardened her eyes, "and your husband away? What do this mean? Tell to me,
child, what it mean his bein' here alone without ere a candle?"

"Lord Mountfalcon is the only friend I have here," said Lucy. "He is very
kind. He comes almost every evening."

"Lord Montfalcon--that his name!" Mrs. Berry exclaimed. "I been that
flurried by the man, I didn't mind it at first. He come every evenin',
and your husband out o' sight! My goodness me! it's gettin' worse and
wors