oung Viscount was in the room with the
Lord Churchill, my Lord of Marlborough's eldest son. But these young
gentlemen went off to the garden; I could see them from the window
tilting at each other with poles in a mimic tournament (grief touches
the young but lightly, and I remember that I beat a drum at the coffin
of my own father). My Lady Viscountess looked out at the two boys at
their game and said--'You see, sir, children are taught to use weapons
of death as toys, and to make a sport of murder;' and as she spoke she
looked so lovely, and stood there in herself so sad and beautiful, an
instance of that doctrine whereof I am a humble preacher, that had I not
dedicated my little volume of the 'Christian Hero'--(I perceive, Harry,
thou hast not cut the leaves of it. The sermon is good, believe me,
though the preacher's life may not answer it)--I say, hadn't I dedicated
the volume to Lord Cutts, I would have asked permission to place her
ladyship's name on the first page. I think I never saw such a beautiful
violet as that of her eyes, Harry. Her complexion is of the pink of the
blush-rose, she hath an exquisite turned wrist and dimpled hand, and I
make no doubt--"

"Did you come to tell me about the dimples on my lady's hand?" broke out
Mr. Esmond, sadly.

"A lovely creature in affliction seems always doubly beautiful to me,"
says the poor Captain, who indeed was but too often in a state to see
double, and so checked he resumed the interrupted thread of his story.
"As I spoke my business," Mr. Steele said, "and narrated to your
mistress what all the world knows, and the other side hath been eager to
acknowledge--that you had tried to put yourself between the two lords,
and to take your patron's quarrel on your own point; I recounted the
general praises of your gallantry, besides my Lord Mohun's particular
testimony to it; I thought the widow listened with some interest, and
her eyes--I have never seen such a violet, Harry--looked up at mine once
or twice. But after I had spoken on this theme for a while she suddenly
broke away with a cry of grief. 'I would to God, sir,' she said, 'I had
never heard that word gallantry which you use, or known the meaning of
it. My lord might have been here but for that; my home might be happy;
my poor boy have a father. It was what you gentlemen call gallantry came
into my home, and drove my husband on to the cruel sword that killed
him. You should not speak the word to a Christian wom