must
somehow be silenced while the feast is going on. This personage is
The Philosopher. Mrs. Berry knew him. She knew that he would come. She
provided against him in the manner she thought most efficacious: that
is, by cheating her eyes and intoxicating her conscience with the due
and proper glories incident to weddings where fathers dilate, mothers
collapse, and marriage settlements are flourished on high by the family
lawyer: and had there been no show of the kind to greet her on her
return from the church, she would, and she foresaw she would, have
stared at squalor and emptiness, and repented her work. The Philosopher
would have laid hold of her by the ear, and called her bad names.
Entrenched behind a breakfast-table so legitimately adorned, Mrs. Berry
defied him. In the presence of that cake he dared not speak above a
whisper. And there were wines to drown him in, should he still think
of protesting; fiery wines, and cool: claret sent purposely by the
bridegroom for the delectation of his friend.

For one good hour, therefore, the labour of many hours kept him dumb.
Ripton was fortifying himself so as to forget him altogether, and the
world as well, till the next morning. Ripton was excited, overdone with
delight. He had already finished one bottle, and listened, pleasantly
flushed, to his emphatic and more abstemious chief. He had nothing to
do but to listen, and to drink. The hero would not allow him to shout
Victory! or hear a word of toasts; and as, from the quantity of oil
poured on it, his eloquence was becoming a natural force in his bosom,
the poor fellow was afflicted with a sort of elephantiasis of suppressed
emotion. At times he half-rose from his chair, and fell vacuously
into it again; or he chuckled in the face of weighty, severely-worded
instructions; tapped his chest, stretched his arms, yawned, and in short
behaved so singularly that Richard observed it, and said: "On my soul, I
don't think you know a word I'm saying."

"Every word, Ricky!" Ripton spirted through the opening. "I'm going down
to your governor, and tell him: Sir Austin! Here's your only chance of
being a happy father--no, no!--Oh! don't you fear me, Ricky! I shall
talk the old gentleman over."

His chief said:

"Look here. You had better not go down to-night. Go down the first
thing to-morrow, by the six o'clock train. Give him my letter. Listen
to me--give him my letter, and don't speak a word till he speaks. His
eyebrows wi