"Oh! that is true! How much I admire that!" cried the dark-eyed dame as she beamed intellectual raptures.
Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: "There is no more grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man at the mercy of his feelings."
"He must have written it," she thought, "when he had himself for an example—strange man that he is!"
Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though decidedly insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man that should hold her captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands. Nevertheless Sir Austin had only to be successful, and this lady's allegiance was his for ever. The trial was at hand.
She said again: "He is not coming to-night," and the baronet, on whose visage a contemplative pleased look had been rising for a minute past, quietly added: "He is come."
Richard's voice was heard in the hall.
There was commotion all over the house at the return of the young heir. Berry, seizing every possible occasion to approach his Bessy now that her involuntary coldness had enhanced her value—"Such is men!" as the soft woman reflected—Berry ascended to her and delivered the news in pompous tones and wheedling gestures. "The best word you've spoke for many a day," says she, and leaves him unfee'd, in an attitude, to hurry and pour bliss into Lucy's ears.
"Lord be praised!" she entered the adjoining room exclaiming, "we're goin' to be happy at last. They men have come to their senses. I could cry to your Virgin and kiss your Cross, you sweet!"
"Hush!" Lucy admonished her, and crooned over the child on her knees. The tiny open hands, full of sleep, clutched; the large blue eyes started awake; and his mother, all trembling and palpitating, knowing, but thirsting to hear it, covered him with her tresses, and tried to still her frame, and rocked, and sang low, interdicting even a whisper from bursting Mrs. Berry.
Richard had come. He was under his father's roof, in the old home that had so soon grown foreign to him. He stood close to his wife and child. He might embrace them both; and now the fulness of his anguish and the madness of the thing he had done smote the young man: now first he tasted hard earthly misery.