oubt. They always are," says my lord. "No doubt, when she
heard he was killed, she fainted from accident."

"But, my lord, MY name is Harry," cried out Esmond, burning red. "You
told my lady, 'Harry was killed!'"

"Damnation! shall I fight you too?" shouts my lord in a fury. "Are you,
you little serpent, warmed by my fire, going to sting--YOU?--No, my boy,
you're an honest boy; you are a good boy." (And here he broke from rage
into tears even more cruel to see.) "You are an honest boy, and I love
you; and, by heavens, I am so wretched that I don't care what sword it
is that ends me. Stop, here's Jack Westbury. Well, Jack! Welcome, old
boy! This is my kinsman, Harry Esmond."

"Who brought your bowls for you at Castlewood, sir?" says Harry, bowing;
and the three gentlemen sat down and drank of that bottle of sack which
was prepared for them.

"Harry is number three," says my lord. "You needn't be afraid of him,
Jack." And the Colonel gave a look, as much as to say, "Indeed, he don't
look as if I need." And then my lord explained what he had only told by
hints before. When he quarrelled with Lord Mohun he was indebted to his
lordship in a sum of sixteen hundred pounds, for which Lord Mohun said
he proposed to wait until my Lord Viscount should pay him. My lord
had raised the sixteen hundred pounds and sent them to Lord Mohun that
morning, and before quitting home had put his affairs into order, and
was now quite ready to abide the issue of the quarrel.

When we had drunk a couple of bottles of sack, a coach was called, and
the three gentlemen went to the Duke's Playhouse, as agreed. The play
was one of Mr. Wycherley's--"Love in a Wood."

Harry Esmond has thought of that play ever since with a kind of terror,
and of Mrs. Bracegirdle, the actress who performed the girl's part in
the comedy. She was disguised as a page, and came and stood before the
gentlemen as they sat on the stage, and looked over her shoulder with
a pair of arch black eyes, and laughed at my lord, and asked what ailed
the gentleman from the country, and had he had bad news from Bullock
fair?

Between the acts of the play the gentlemen crossed over and conversed
freely. There were two of Lord Mohun's party, Captain Macartney, in a
military habit, and a gentleman in a suit of blue velvet and silver in a
fair periwig, with a rich fall of point of Venice lace--my Lord the Earl
of Warwick and Holland. My lord had a paper of oranges, which he ate and
of