make it yourself, ma'am?"

The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry and upset that
train of symbolic representations by which she was seeking to make him
guess the catastrophe and spare her the furnace of confession.

"I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley," she replied. "It's a bought
cake, and I'm a lost woman. Little I dreamed when I had him in my arms
a baby that I should some day be marrying him out of my own house! I
little dreamed that! Oh, why did he come to me! Don't you remember his
old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that went away so sudden, and no
fault of hers, Mr. Harley! The very mornin' after the night you got into
Mr. Benson's cellar, and got so tipsy on his Madeary--I remember it as
clear as yesterday!--and Mr. Benson was that angry he threatened to use
the whip to you, and I helped put you to bed. I'm that very woman."

Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless youthful
life.

"Well, ma'am! well?" he said. He would bring her to the furnace.

"Won't you see it all, kind sir?" Mrs. Berry appealed to him in pathetic
dumb show.

Doubtless by this time Adrian did see it all, and was mentally cursing
at Folly, and reckoning the immediate consequences, but he looked
uninstructed, his peculiar dimple-smile was undisturbed, his comfortable
full-bodied posture was the same. "Well, ma'am?" he spurred her on.

Mrs. Berry burst forth: "It were done this mornin', Mr. Harley, in the
church, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to, by licence."

Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony. "Oh!" he said,
like one who is as hard as facts, and as little to be moved: "Somebody
was married this morning; was it Mr. Thompson, or Mr. Feverel?"

Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton, and removed the shawl from him,
saying: "Do he look like a new married bridegroom, Mr. Harley?"

Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic gravity.

"This young gentleman was at church this morning?" he asked.

"Oh! quite reasonable and proper then," Mrs. Berry begged him to
understand.

"Of course, ma'am." Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid inanimate
limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth queerly. "You were all
reasonable and proper, ma'am. The principal male performer, then, is my
cousin, Mr. Feverel? He was married by you, this morning, by licence at
your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty breakfast, and left
intoxicated."

Mrs. Berry flew