“A child?  Richard has one?” Austin’s clear eyes shone with pleasure.

“I suppose it’s not common among your tropical savages.  He has one:  one as big as two.  That has been the death-blow to the System.  It bore the marriage—­the baby was too much for it.  Could it swallow the baby, ’twould live.  She, the wonderful woman, has produced a large boy.  I assure you it’s quite amusing to see the System opening its mouth every hour of the day, trying to gulp him down, aware that it would be a consummate cure, or a happy release.”

By degrees Austin learnt the baronet’s proceedings, and smiled sadly.

“How has Ricky turned out?” he asked.  “What sort of a character has he?”

“The poor boy is ruined by his excessive anxiety about it.  Character? he has the character of a bullet with a treble charge of powder behind it.  Enthusiasm is the powder.  That boy could get up an enthusiasm for the maiden days of Ops!  He was going to reform the world, after your fashion, Austin,—­you have something to answer for.  Unfortunately he began with the feminine side of it.  Cupid proud of Phoebus newly slain, or Pluto wishing to people his kingdom, if you like, put it into the soft head of one of the guileless grateful creatures to kiss him for his good work.  Oh, horror! he never expected that.  Conceive the System in the flesh, and you have our Richard.  The consequence is, that this male Peri refuses to enter his Paradise, though the gates are open for him, the trumpets blow, and the fair unspotted one awaits him fruitful within.  We heard of him last that he was trying the German waters—­preparatory to his undertaking the release of Italy from the subjugation of the Teuton.  Let’s hope they’ll wash him.  He is in the company of Lady Judith Felle—­ your old friend, the ardent female Radical who married the decrepit to carry out her principles.  They always marry English lords, or foreign princes:  I admire their tactics.”

“Judith is bad for him in such a state.  I like her, but she was always too sentimental,” said Austin.

“Sentiment made her marry the old lord, I suppose?  I like her for her sentiment, Austin.  Sentimental people are sure to live long and die fat.  Feeling, that’s the slayer, coz.  Sentiment! ’tis the cajolery of existence:  the soft bloom which whoso weareth, he or she is enviable.  Would that I had more!”

“You’re not much changed, Adrian.”

“I’m not a Radical, Austin.”

Further inquiries, responded to in Adrian’s figurative speech, instructed Austin that the baronet was waiting for his son, in a posture of statuesque offended paternity, before he would receive his daughter-in-law and grandson.  That was what Adrian meant by the efforts of the System to swallow the baby.

“We’re in a tangle,” said the wise youth.  “Time will extricate us, I presume, or what is the venerable signor good for?”

Austin mused some minutes, and asked for Lucy’s place of residence.