hen King Charles was compelled to lend troops to the States; and
against them, when his Majesty made an alliance with the French King. In
these campaigns Thomas Esmond was more remarked for duelling, brawling,
vice, and play, than for any conspicuous gallantry in the field, and
came back to England, like many another English gentleman who has
travelled, with a character by no means improved by his foreign
experience. He had dissipated his small paternal inheritance of a
younger brother's portion, and, as truth must be told, was no better
than a hanger-on of ordinaries, and a brawler about Alsatia and the
Friars, when he bethought him of a means of mending his fortune.

His cousin was now of more than middle age, and had nobody's word but
her own for the beauty which she said she once possessed. She was lean,
and yellow, and long in the tooth; all the red and white in all the
toy-shops in London could not make a beauty of her--Mr. Killigrew called
her the Sybil, the death's-head put up at the King's feast as a memento
mori, &c.--in fine, a woman who might be easy of conquest, but whom
only a very bold man would think of conquering. This bold man was Thomas
Esmond. He had a fancy to my Lord Castlewood's savings, the amount of
which rumor had very much exaggerated. Madame Isabel was said to have
Royal jewels of great value; whereas poor Tom Esmond's last coat but one
was in pawn.

My lord had at this time a fine house in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, nigh to
the Duke's Theatre and the Portugal ambassador's chapel. Tom Esmond,
who had frequented the one as long as he had money to spend among the
actresses, now came to the church as assiduously. He looked so lean and
shabby, that he passed without difficulty for a repentant sinner; and
so, becoming converted, you may be sure took his uncle's priest for a
director.

This charitable father reconciled him with the old lord, his uncle,
who a short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my
lord's coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court,
while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the
point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard--to his twopenny
ordinary in Bell Yard.

Thomas Esmond, after this reconciliation with his uncle, very soon began
to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good living and
clean linen. He fasted rigorously twice a week, to be sure; but he made
amends on the other days: and, to show how