rs. Berry feebly
tried to bar his progress in the passage. He pushed past her, and
conducted the lady into the parlour without speaking. Mrs. Berry did not
follow. She heard him murmur a few sentences within. Then he came out.
All her crest stood up, as she whispered vigorously, "Mr. Richard! if
that woman stay here, I go forth. My house ain't a penitentiary for
unfort'nate females, sir"--

He frowned at her curiously; but as she was on the point of renewing her
indignant protest, he clapped his hand across her mouth, and spoke words
in her ear that had awful import to her. She trembled, breathing low:
"My God, forgive, me!

"Richard?" And her virtue was humbled. "Lady Feverel is it? Your mother,
Mr. Richard?" And her virtue was humbled.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

One may suppose that a prematurely aged, oily little man; a poet in bad
circumstances; a decrepit butterfly chained to a disappointed inkstand,
will not put out strenuous energies to retain his ancient paramour when
a robust young man comes imperatively to demand his mother of him in her
person. The colloquy was short between Diaper Sandoe and Richard. The
question was referred to the poor spiritless lady, who, seeing that her
son made no question of it, cast herself on his hands. Small loss to
her was Diaper; but he was the loss of habit, and that is something to a
woman who has lived. The blood of her son had been running so long alien
from her that the sense of her motherhood smote he now with strangeness,
and Richard's stern gentleness seemed like dreadful justice come upon
her. Her heart had almost forgotten its maternal functions. She called
him Sir, till he bade her remember he was her son. Her voice sounded
to him like that of a broken-throated lamb, so painful and weak it was,
with the plaintive stop in the utterance. When he kissed her, her skin
was cold. Her thin hand fell out of his when his grasp related. "Can
sin hunt one like this?" he asked, bitterly reproaching himself for the
shame she had caused him to endure, and a deep compassion filled his
breast.

Poetic justice had been dealt to Diaper the poet. He thought of all he
had sacrificed for this woman--the comfortable quarters, the friend, the
happy flights. He could not but accuse her of unfaithfulness in leaving
him in his old age. Habit had legalized his union with her. He wrote as
pathetically of the break of habit as men feel at the death of love, and
when we are old and have no fair