Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred there.

"His father's Sir Austin?" wailed the black-satin bunch from behind her
handkerchief.

Adrian verified Richard's descent.

"Oh, then, what have I been and done!" she cried, and stared blankly at
her visitor. "I been and married my baby! I been and married the bread
out of my own mouth. O Mr. Harley! Mr. Harley! I knew you when you was
a boy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you. And it's my softness
that's my ruin, for I never can resist a man's asking. Look at that
cake, Mr. Harley!"

Adrian followed her directions quite coolly. "Wedding-cake, ma'am!" he
said.

"Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!"

"Did you 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