wildered her. But, the Colonel
gone, there was nobody else whom she was disposed to obey,--and so I
am rather glad for my part that I did not live a hundred years ago at
Castlewood in Westmorland County in Virginia. I fancy, one would not
have been too happy there. Happy, who is happy? Was not there a serpent
in Paradise itself? and if Eve had been perfectly happy beforehand,
would she have listened to him?

The management of the house of Castlewood had been in the hands of the
active little lady long before the Colonel slept the sleep of the just.
She now exercised a rigid supervision over the estate; dismissed
Colonel Esmond's English factor and employed a new one; built, improved,
planted, grew tobacco, appointed a new overseer, and imported a new
tutor. Much as she loved her father, there were some of his maxims by
which she was not inclined to abide. Had she not obeyed her papa and
mamma during all their lives, as a dutiful daughter should? So ought
all children to obey their parents, that their days might be long in
the land. The little Queen domineered over her little dominion, and the
Princes her sons were only her first subjects. Ere long she discontinued
her husband's name of Warrington and went by the name of Madam Esmond
in the country. Her family pretensions were known there. She had no
objection to talk of the Marquis's title which King James had given to
her father and grandfather. Her papa's enormous magnanimity might induce
him to give up his titles and rank to the younger branch of the family,
and to her half-brother, my Lord Castlewood and his children; but she
and her sons were of the elder branch of the Esmonds, and she expected
that they should be treated accordingly. Lord Fairfax was the only
gentleman in the colony of Virginia to whom she would allow precedence
over her. She insisted on the pas before all Lieutenant-Governors' and
Judges' ladies; before the wife of the Governor of a colony she would,
of course, yield as to the representative of the Sovereign. Accounts
are extant, in the family papers and letters, of one or two tremendous
battles which Madam fought with the wives of colonial dignitaries upon
these questions of etiquette. As for her husband's family of Warrington,
they were as naught in her eyes. She married an English baronet's
younger son out of Norfolk to please her parents, whom she was always
bound to obey. At the early age at which she married--a chit out of
a boarding-school