his son depart. As of old, he took counsel
with Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing. "Somebody has kissed him,
sir, and the chaste boy can't get over it." This absurd suggestion
did more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable
reasonable key to Richard's conduct. It set him thinking that it might
be a prudish strain in the young man's mind, due to the System in
difficulties.

"I may have been wrong in one thing," he said, with an air of the utmost
doubt of it. "I, perhaps, was wrong in allowing him so much liberty
during his probation."

Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded it.

"Yes, yes; that is on me."

His was an order of mind that would accept the most burdensome charges,
and by some species of moral usury make a profit out of them.

Clare was little talked of. Adrian attributed the employment of the
telegraph to John Todhunter's uxorious distress at a toothache, or
possibly the first symptoms of an heir to his house.

"That child's mind has disease in it... She is not sound," said the
baronet.

On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood Mrs. Berry. Her
wish to speak a few words with the baronet reverentially communicated,
she was ushered upstairs into his room.

Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was beckoned to
occupy.

"Well' ma'am, you have something to say," observed the baronet, for she
seemed loth to commence.

"Wishin' I hadn't--" Mrs. Berry took him up, and mindful of the good
rule to begin at the beginning, pursued: "I dare say, Sir Austin, you
don't remember me, and I little thought when last we parted our meeting
'd be like this. Twenty year don't go over one without showin' it, no
more than twenty ox. It's a might o' time,--twenty year! Leastways not
quite twenty, it ain't."

"Round figures are best," Adrian remarked.

"In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up, and got himself
married!" said Mrs. Berry, diving straight into the case.

Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit who had
assisted his son in that venture. It was a stretch of his patience
to hear himself addressed on a family matter; but he was naturally
courteous.

"He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger! If twenty year alters us
as have knowed each other on the earth, how must they alter they that
we parted with just come from heaven! And a heavenly babe he were! so
sweet! so strong! so fat!"

Adrian laughed aloud