rd, Esmond
was as pleased as another to take his share of the bottle and the play.

How was it that the old aunt's news, or it might be scandal, about
Tom Tusher, caused such a strange and sudden excitement in Tom's old
playfellow? Hadn't he sworn a thousand times in his own mind that the
Lady of Castlewood, who had treated him with such kindness once,
and then had left him so cruelly, was, and was to remain henceforth,
indifferent to him for ever? Had his pride and his sense of justice not
long since helped him to cure the pain of that desertion--was it even a
pain to him now? Why, but last night as he walked across the fields
and meadows to Chelsey from Pall Mall, had he not composed two or three
stanzas of a song, celebrating Bracegirdle's brown eyes, and declaring
them a thousand times more beautiful than the brightest blue ones that
ever languished under the lashes of an insipid fair beauty! But Tom
Tusher! Tom Tusher, the waiting-woman's son, raising up his little eyes
to his mistress! Tom Tusher presuming to think of Castlewood's widow!
Rage and contempt filled Mr. Harry's heart at the very notion; the honor
of the family, of which he was the chief, made it his duty to prevent
so monstrous an alliance, and to chastise the upstart who could dare
to think of such an insult to their house. 'Tis true Mr. Esmond often
boasted of republican principles, and could remember many fine speeches
he had made at college and elsewhere, with WORTH and not BIRTH for a
text: but Tom Tusher to take the place of the noble Castlewood--faugh!
'twas as monstrous as King Hamlet's widow taking off her weeds for
Claudius. Esmond laughed at all widows, all wives, all women; and were
the banns about to be published, as no doubt they were, that very next
Sunday at Walcote Church, Esmond swore that he would be present to shout
No! in the face of the congregation, and to take a private revenge upon
the ears of the bridegroom.

Instead of going to dinner then at the "Rose" that night, Mr. Esmond
bade his servant pack a portmanteau and get horses, and was at Farnham,
half-way on the road to Walcote, thirty miles off, before his comrades
had got to their supper after the play. He bade his man give no hint to
my Lady Dowager's household of the expedition on which he was going;
and as Chelsey was distant from London, the roads bad, and infested
by footpads, and Esmond often in the habit, when engaged in a party of
pleasure, of lying at a friend's