ttle villages in which they
and their vassals dwelt. Rachel Esmond ruled like a little queen in
Castlewood; the princes, her neighbours, governed their estates round
about. Many of these were rather needy potentates, living plentifully
but in the roughest fashion, having numerous domestics whose liveries
were often ragged; keeping open houses, and turning away no stranger
from their gates; proud, idle, fond of all sorts of field sports
as became gentlemen of good lineage. The widow of Castlewood was as
hospitable as her neighbours, and a better economist than most of
them. More than one, no doubt, would have had no objection to share her
life-interest in the estate, and supply the place of papa to her boys.
But where was the man good enough for a person of her ladyship's exalted
birth? There was a talk of making the Duke of Cumberland viceroy, or
even king, over America. Madam Warrington's gossips laughed, and said
she was waiting for him. She remarked, with much gravity and dignity,
that persons of as high birth as his Royal Highness had made offers of
alliance to the Esmond family.

She had, as lieutenant under her, an officer's widow who has been before
named, and who had been Madam Esmond's companion at school, as her late
husband had been the regimental friend of the late Mr. Warrington. When
the English girls at the Kensington Academy, where Rachel Esmond had her
education, teased and tortured the little American stranger, and laughed
at the princified airs which she gave herself from a very early age,
Fanny Parker defended and befriended her. They both married ensigns
in Kingsley's. They became tenderly attached to each other. It was "my
Fanny" and "my Rachel" in the letters of the young ladies. Then, my
Fanny's husband died in sad out-at-elbowed circumstances, leaving
no provision for his widow and her infant; and, in one of his annual
voyages, Captain Franks brought over Mrs. Mountain, in the Young Rachel,
to Virginia.

There was plenty of room in Castlewood House, and Mrs. Mountain served
to enliven the place. She played cards with the mistress: she had some
knowledge of music, and could help the eldest boy in that way: she
laughed and was pleased with the guests: she saw to the strangers'
chambers, and presided over the presses and the linen. She was a kind,
brisk, jolly-looking widow, and more than one unmarried gentleman of the
colony asked her to change her name for his own. But she chose to keep
that of