and 'tis left to me to explain from the window. My lord looks shocked,
Richard is angry with her for having to be ashamed of himself, Beauty
dries her eyes, and after a pause of general foolishness, the business of
life is resumed. I may add that the Doctor has just been dug up, and we
are busy, in the enemy's absence, renewing old Aeson with enchanted
threads. By the way, a Papist priest has blest them."

A month had passed when Adrian wrote this letter. He was very
comfortable; so of course he thought Time was doing his duty. Not a word
did he say of Richard's return, and for some reason or other neither
Richard nor Lucy spoke of it now.

Lady Blandish wrote back: "His father thinks he has refused to come to
him. By your utter silence on the subject, I fear that it must be so.
Make him come. Bring him by force. Insist on his coming. Is he mad?
He must come at once."

To this Adrian replied, after a contemplative comfortable lapse of a day
or two, which might be laid to his efforts to adopt the lady's advice,
"The point is that the half man declines to come without the whole man.
The terrible question of sex is our obstruction."

Lady Blandish was in despair. She had no positive assurance that the
baronet would see his son; the mask put them all in the dark; but she
thought she saw in Sir Austin irritation that the offender, at least when
the opening to come and make his peace seemed to be before him, should
let days and weeks go by. She saw through the mask sufficiently not to
have any hope of his consenting to receive the couple at present; she was
sure that his equanimity was fictitious; but she pierced no farther, or
she might have started and asked herself, Is this the heart of a woman?