e had prophecied much grief to the
baronet.

Poor John Todhunter, who would rather have married the mother, and
had none of your heroic notions about the sacred necessity for love
in marriage, moved as one guiltless of offence, and deserving his
happiness. Mrs. Doria shielded him from the hero. To see him smile at
Clare's obedient figure, and try not to look paternal, was touching.

Meantime Clare's marriage served one purpose. It completely occupied
Richard's mind, and prevented him from chafing at the vexation of not
finding his father ready to meet him when he came to town. A letter
had awaited Adrian at the hotel, which said, "Detain him till you hear
further from me. Take him about with you into every form of society."
No more than that. Adrian had to extemporize, that the baronet had gone
down to Wales on pressing business, and would be back in a week or
so. For ulterior inventions and devices wherewith to keep the young
gentleman in town, he applied to Mrs. Doria. "Leave him to me," said
Mrs. Doria, "I'll manage him." And she did.

"Who can say," asks The Pilgrim's Scrip, "when he is not walking a
puppet to some woman?"

Mrs. Doria would hear no good of Lucy. "I believe," she observed, as
Adrian ventured a shrugging protest in her behalf,--"it is my firm
opinion, that a scullery-maid would turn any of you men round her little
finger--only give her time and opportunity." By dwelling on the arts of
women, she reconciled it to her conscience to do her best to divide the
young husband from his wife till it pleased his father they should
live their unhallowed union again. Without compunction, or a sense of
incongruity, she abused her brother and assisted the fulfilment of his
behests.

So the puppets were marshalled by Mrs. Doria, happy, or sad, or
indifferent. Quite against his set resolve and the tide of his feelings,
Richard found himself standing behind Clare in the church--the very
edifice that had witnessed his own marriage, and heard, "I, Clare Doria,
take thee John Pemberton," clearly pronounced. He stood with black brows
dissecting the arts of the tailor and hairdresser on unconscious John.
The back, and much of the middle, of Mr. Todhunter's head was bald; the
back shone like an egg-shell, but across the middle the artist had drawn
two long dabs of hair from the sides, and plastered them cunningly,
so that all save wilful eyes would have acknowledged the head to be
covered. The man's only pretension wa