and the play; and the Prince George, and the Princess
Anne--didn't you, Trix?"

"They are both very fat, and smelt of brandy," the child said.

Papa roared with laughing.

"Brandy!" he said. "And how do you know, Miss Pert?"

"Because your lordship smells of it after supper, when I embrace you
before you go to bed," said the young lady, who, indeed, was as pert
as her father said, and looked as beautiful a little gipsy as eyes ever
gazed on.

"And now for my lady," said my lord, going up the stairs, and passing
under the tapestry curtain that hung before the drawing-room door.
Esmond remembered that noble figure, handsomely arrayed in scarlet.
Within the last few months he himself had grown from a boy to be a man,
and with his figure his thoughts had shot up, and grown manly.

My lady's countenance, of which Harry Esmond was accustomed to watch the
changes, and with a solicitous affection to note and interpret the signs
of gladness or care, wore a sad and depressed look for many weeks
after her lord's return: during which it seemed as if, by caresses and
entreaties, she strove to win him back from some ill humor he had, and
which he did not choose to throw off. In her eagerness to please him she
practised a hundred of those arts which had formerly charmed him, but
which seemed now to have lost their potency. Her songs did not amuse
him; and she hushed them and the children when in his presence. My lord
sat silent at his dinner, drinking greatly, his lady opposite to him,
looking furtively at his face, though also speechless. Her silence
annoyed him as much as her speech; and he would peevishly, and with an
oath, ask her why she held her tongue and looked so glum; or he would
roughly check her when speaking, and bid her not talk nonsense. It
seemed as if, since his return, nothing she could do or say could please
him.

When a master and mistress are at strife in a house, the subordinates
in the family take the one side or the other. Harry Esmond stood in
so great fear of my lord, that he would run a league barefoot to do a
message for him; but his attachment for Lady Esmond was such a passion
of grateful regard, that to spare her a grief, or to do her a service,
he would have given his life daily: and it was by the very depth and
intensity of this regard that he began to divine how unhappy his adored
lady's life was, and that a secret care (for she never spoke of her
anxieties) was weighing upon her.

Can any