lodging in town, there was no need that
his old aunt should be disturbed at his absence--indeed, nothing more
delighted the old lady than to fancy that mon cousin, the incorrigible
young sinner, was abroad boxing the watch, or scouring St. Giles's. When
she was not at her books of devotion, she thought Etheridge and Sedley
very good reading. She had a hundred pretty stories about Rochester,
Harry Jermyn, and Hamilton; and if Esmond would but have run away with
the wife even of a citizen, 'tis my belief she would have pawned her
diamonds (the best of them went to our Lady of Chaillot) to pay his
damages.

My lord's little house of Walcote--which he inhabited before he took
his title and occupied the house of Castlewood--lies about a mile from
Winchester, and his widow had returned to Walcote after my lord's death
as a place always dear to her, and where her earliest and happiest days
had been spent, cheerfuller than Castlewood, which was too large for her
straitened means, and giving her, too, the protection of the ex-dean,
her father. The young Viscount had a year's schooling at the famous
college there, with Mr. Tusher as his governor. So much news of them Mr.
Esmond had had during the past year from the old Viscountess, his own
father's widow; from the young one there had never been a word.

Twice or thrice in his benefactor's lifetime, Esmond had been to
Walcote; and now, taking but a couple of hours' rest only at the inn on
the road, he was up again long before daybreak, and made such good speed
that he was at Walcote by two o'clock of the day. He rid to the end of
the village, where he alighted and sent a man thence to Mr. Tusher, with
a message that a gentleman from London would speak with him on urgent
business. The messenger came back to say the Doctor was in town, most
likely at prayers in the Cathedral. My Lady Viscountess was there, too;
she always went to Cathedral prayers every day.

The horses belonged to the post-house at Winchester. Esmond mounted
again and rode on to the "George;" whence he walked, leaving his
grumbling domestic at last happy with a dinner, straight to the
Cathedral. The organ was playing: the winter's day was already growing
gray: as he passed under the street-arch into the Cathedral yard, and
made his way into the ancient solemn edifice.

CHAPTER VI.

THE 29TH DECEMBER.

There was scarce a score of persons in the Cathedral beside the Dean and
some of his clergy, and the