return.

He went immediately and paid his court to his new general, General
Lumley, who received him graciously, having known his father, and also,
he was pleased to say, having had the very best accounts of Mr. Esmond
from the officer whose aide-de-camp he had been at Vigo. During this
winter Mr. Esmond was gazetted to a lieutenancy in Brigadier Webb's
regiment of Fusileers, then with their colonel in Flanders; but being
now attached to the suite of Mr. Lumley, Esmond did not join his own
regiment until more than a year afterwards, and after his return from
the campaign of Blenheim, which was fought the next year. The campaign
began very early, our troops marching out of their quarters before the
winter was almost over, and investing the city of Bonn, on the Rhine,
under the Duke's command. His Grace joined the army in deep grief of
mind, with crape on his sleeve, and his household in mourning; and the
very same packet which brought the Commander-in-Chief over, brought
letters to the forces which preceded him, and one from his dear mistress
to Esmond, which interested him not a little.

The young Marquis of Blandford, his Grace's son, who had been entered in
King's College in Cambridge, (whither my Lord Viscount had also gone,
to Trinity, with Mr. Tusher as his governor,) had been seized with
small-pox, and was dead at sixteen years of age, and so poor Frank's
schemes for his sister's advancement were over, and that innocent
childish passion nipped in the birth.

Esmond's mistress would have had him return, at least her letters hinted
as much; but in the presence of the enemy this was impossible, and
our young man took his humble share in the siege, which need not be
described here, and had the good luck to escape without a wound of any
sort, and to drink his general's health after the surrender. He was
in constant military duty this year, and did not think of asking for a
leave of absence, as one or two of his less fortunate friends did, who
were cast away in that tremendous storm which happened towards the
close of November, that "which of late o'er pale Britannia past" (as
Mr. Addison sang of it), and in which scores of our greatest ships and
15,000 of our seamen went down.

They said that our Duke was quite heart-broken by the calamity which had
befallen his family; but his enemies found that he could subdue them,
as well as master his grief. Successful as had been this great General's
operations in the past y