College experience; that with this sort
of company and conversation a man must fall in sooner or later in his
course through the world: and it mattered very little whether he heard
it at twelve years old or twenty--the youths who quitted mother's
apron-strings the latest being not uncommonly the wildest rakes. But it
was about her daughter that Lady Castlewood was the most anxious,
and the danger which she thought menaced the little Beatrix from the
indulgences which her father gave her, (it must be owned that my lord,
since these unhappy domestic differences especially, was at once violent
in his language to the children when angry, as he was too familiar, not
to say coarse, when he was in a good humor,) and from the company into
which the careless lord brought the child.

Not very far off from Castlewood is Sark Castle, where the Marchioness
of Sark lived, who was known to have been a mistress of the late King
Charles--and to this house, whither indeed a great part of the country
gentry went, my lord insisted upon going, not only himself, but on
taking his little daughter and son, to play with the children there. The
children were nothing loth, for the house was splendid, and the welcome
kind enough. But my lady, justly no doubt, thought that the children of
such a mother as that noted Lady Sark had been, could be no good company
for her two; and spoke her mind to her lord. His own language when he
was thwarted was not indeed of the gentlest: to be brief, there was a
family dispute on this, as there had been on many other points--and the
lady was not only forced to give in, for the other's will was law--nor
could she, on account of their tender age, tell her children what
was the nature of her objection to their visit of pleasure, or indeed
mention to them any objection at all--but she had the additional secret
mortification to find them returning delighted with their new friends,
loaded with presents from them, and eager to be allowed to go back to
a place of such delights as Sark Castle. Every year she thought the
company there would be more dangerous to her daughter, as from a child
Beatrix grew to a woman, and her daily increasing beauty, and many
faults of character too, expanded.

It was Harry Esmond's lot to see one of the visits which the old Lady of
Sark paid to the Lady of Castlewood Hall: whither she came in state with
six chestnut horses and blue ribbons, a page on each carriage step, a
gentleman of the