Mrs. Berry sought grace while she performed a series of apologetic bobs, and wiped the perspiration from her forehead. Lucy put her into a chair: Lord Mountfalcon asked for an account of her passage over to the Island; receiving distressingly full particulars, by which it was revealed that the softness of her heart was only equalled by the weakness of her stomach. The recital calmed Mrs. Berry down. "Well, and where's my--where's Mr. Richard? yer husband, my dear?" Mrs. Berry turned from her tale to question. "Did you expect to see him here?" said Lucy, in a broken voice. "And where else, my love? since he haven't been seen in London a whole fortnight." Lucy did not speak. "We will dismiss the Emperor Julian till to-morrow, I think," said Lord Mountfalcon, rising and bowing. Lucy gave him her hand with mute thanks. He touched it distantly, embraced Mrs. Berry in a farewell bow, and was shown out of the house by Tom Bakewell. The moment he was gone, Mrs. Berry threw up her arms. "Did ye ever know sich a horrid thing to go and happen to a virtuous woman!" she exclaimed. "I could cry at it, I could! To be goin' and kissin' a strange hairy man! Oh dear me! what's cornin' next, I wonder? Whiskers! thinks I--for I know the touch o' whiskers--'t ain't like other hair--what! have he growed a crop that sudden, I says to myself; and it flashed on me I been and made a awful mistake! and the lights come in, and I see that great hairy man--beggin' his pardon--nobleman, and if I could 'a dropped through the floor out o' sight o' men, drat 'em! they're al'ays in the way, that they are!"-- "Mrs. Berry," Lucy checked her, "did you expect to find him here?" "Askin' that solemn?" retorted Berry. "What him? your husband? O' course I did! and you got him--somewheres hid." "I have not heard from my husband for fifteen days," said Lucy, and her tears rolled heavily off her cheeks. "Not heer from him!--fifteen days!" Berry echoed. "O Mrs. Berry! dear kind Mrs. Berry! have you no news? nothing to tell me! I've borne it so long. They're cruel to me, Mrs. Berry. Oh, do you know if I have offended him--my husband? While he wrote I did not complain. I could live on his letters for years. But not to hear from him! To think I have ruined him, and that he repents! Do they want to take him from me? Do they want me dead? O Mrs. Berry! I've had no one to speak out my heart to all this time, and I cannot, cannot help crying, Mrs. Berry!" Mrs. Berry was inclined to be miserable at what she heard from Lucy's lips, and she was herself full of dire apprehension; but it was never this excellent creature's system to be miserable in company. The sight of a sorrow that was not positive, and could not refer to proof, set her resolutely the other way.