kiss; and that's why I take 'em and love 'em in other people's
houses, Harry. I'm killed by the very virtue of that proud woman.
Virtue! give me the virtue that can forgive; give me the virtue that
thinks not of preserving itself, but of making other folks happy.
Damme, what matters a scar or two if 'tis got in helping a friend in ill
fortune?"

And my lord again slapped the table, and took a great draught from the
tankard. Harry Esmond admired as he listened to him, and thought how the
poor preacher of this self-sacrifice had fled from the small-pox, which
the lady had borne so cheerfully, and which had been the cause of so
much disunion in the lives of all in this house. "How well men preach,"
thought the young man, "and each is the example in his own sermon. How
each has a story in a dispute, and a true one, too, and both are right
or wrong as you will!" Harry's heart was pained within him, to watch the
struggles and pangs that tore the breast of this kind, manly friend and
protector.

"Indeed, sir," said he, "I wish to God that my mistress could hear you
speak as I have heard you; she would know much that would make her life
the happier, could she hear it." But my lord flung away with one of his
oaths, and a jeer; he said that Parson Harry was a good fellow; but that
as for women, all women were alike--all jades and heartless. So a man
dashes a fine vase down, and despises it for being broken. It may be
worthless--true: but who had the keeping of it, and who shattered it?

Harry, who would have given his life to make his benefactress and her
husband happy, bethought him, now that he saw what my lord's state of
mind was, and that he really had a great deal of that love left in his
heart, and ready for his wife's acceptance if she would take it, whether
he could not be a means of reconciliation between these two persons,
whom he revered the most in the world. And he cast about how he should
break a part of his mind to his mistress, and warn her that in his,
Harry's opinion, at least, her husband was still her admirer, and even
her lover.

But he found the subject a very difficult one to handle, when he
ventured to remonstrate, which he did in the very gravest tone, (for
long confidence and reiterated proofs of devotion and loyalty had given
him a sort of authority in the house, which he resumed as soon as ever
he returned to it,) and with a speech that should have some effect, as,
indeed, it was uttered with the s