tted soft woman was tracking the baronet's thoughts, and she
had absolutely run him down and taken an explanation out of his mouth, by
which Mrs. Berry was to have been informed that he had acted from a
principle of his own, and devolved a wisdom she could not be expected to
comprehend.

Of course he became advised immediately that it would be waste of time to
direct such an explanation to her inferior capacity.

He gave her his hand, saying, "My son has gone out of town to see his
cousin, who is ill. He will return in two or three days, and then they
will both come to me at Raynham."

Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way to the floor
perpendicularly. "He pass her like a stranger in the park this evenin',"
she faltered.

"Ah?" said the baronet. "Yes, well! they will be at Raynham before the
week is over."

Mrs. Berry was not quite satisfied. "Not of his own accord he pass that
sweet young wife of his like a stranger this day, Sir Austin!"

"I must beg you not to intrude further, ma'am."

Mrs. Berry bobbed her bunch of a body out of the room.

"All's well that ends well," she said to herself. "It's just bad
inquirin' too close among men. We must take 'em somethin' like
Providence--as they come. Thank heaven! I kep' back the baby."

In Mrs. Berry's eyes the baby was the victorious reserve.

Adrian asked his chief what he thought of that specimen of woman.

"I think I have not met a better in my life," said the baronet, mingling
praise and sarcasm.

Clare lies in her bed as placid as in the days when she breathed; her
white hands stretched their length along the sheets, at peace from head
to feet. She needs iron no more. Richard is face to face with death for
the first time. He sees the sculpture of clay--the spark gone.

Clare gave her mother the welcome of the dead. This child would have
spoken nothing but kind commonplaces had she been alive. She was dead,
and none knew her malady. On her fourth finger were two wedding-rings.

When hours of weeping had silenced the mother's anguish, she, for some
comfort she saw in it, pointed out that strange thing to Richard,
speaking low in the chamber of the dead; and then he learnt that it was
his own lost ring Clare wore in the two worlds. He learnt from her
husband that Clare's last request had been that neither of the rings
should be removed. She had written it; she would not speak it.

"I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have