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 got
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.