d not a single
tear for her, and fell to composing an elegy in Latin verses over the
rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs
deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that
surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was
an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a
long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a
funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and
are dead almost before they are born. Esmond could repeat, to his last
day, some of the doggerel lines in which his muse bewailed his pretty
lass; not without shame to remember how bad the verses were, and how
good he thought them; how false the grief, and yet how he was rather
proud of it. 'Tis an error, surely, to talk of the simplicity of youth.
I think no persons are more hypocritical, and have a more affected
behavior to one another, than the young. They deceive themselves and
each other with artifices that do not impose upon men of the world; and
so we get to understand truth better, and grow simpler as we grow older.

When my lady heard of the fate which had befallen poor Nancy, she said
nothing so long as Tusher was by, but when he was gone, she took Harry
Esmond's hand and said--

"Harry, I beg your pardon for those cruel words I used on the night you
were taken ill. I am shocked at the fate of the poor creature, and
am sure that nothing had happened of that with which, in my anger, I
charged you. And the very first day we go out, you must take me to the
blacksmith, and we must see if there is anything I can do to console
the poor old man. Poor man! to lose both his children! What should I do
without mine?"

And this was, indeed, the very first walk which my lady took, leaning on
Esmond's arm, after her illness. But her visit brought no consolation to
the old father; and he showed no softness, or desire to speak. "The Lord
gave and took away," he said; and he knew what His servant's duty was.
He wanted for nothing--less now than ever before, as there were
fewer mouths to feed. He wished her ladyship and Master Esmond good
morning--he had grown tall in his illness, and was but very little
marked; and with this, and a surly bow, he went in from the smithy to
the house, leaving my lady, somewhat silenced and shamefaced, at the
door. He had a handsome stone put up for his two children, which may be
seen in Castlew