e.

"A sister of the young fellow who would have adopted you as his son
was the person who took charge of you. Your mother and this person were
cousins. She had just lost a child of her own, which you replaced, your
own mother being too sick and feeble to feed you; and presently your
nurse grew so fond of you, that she even grudged letting you visit the
convent where your mother was, and where the nuns petted the little
infant, as they pitied and loved its unhappy parent. Her vocation became
stronger every day, and at the end of two years she was received as a
sister of the house.

"Your nurse's family were silk-weavers out of France, whither they
returned to Arras in French Flanders, shortly before your mother took
her vows, carrying you with them, then a child of three years old. 'Twas
a town, before the late vigorous measures of the French king, full of
Protestants, and here your nurse's father, old Pastoureau, he with
whom you afterwards lived at Ealing, adopted the reformed doctrines,
perverting all his house with him. They were expelled thence by the
edict of his most Christian Majesty, and came to London, and set up
their looms in Spittlefields. The old man brought a little money with
him, and carried on his trade, but in a poor way. He was a widower; by
this time his daughter, a widow too, kept house for him, and his son
and he labored together at their vocation. Meanwhile your father had
publicly owned his conversion just before King Charles's death (in whom
our Church had much such another convert), was reconciled to my Lord
Viscount Castlewood, and married, as you know, to his daughter.

"It chanced that the younger Pastoureau, going with a piece of brocade
to the mercer who employed him, on Ludgate Hill, met his old rival
coming out of an ordinary there. Pastoureau knew your father at once,
seized him by the collar, and upbraided him as a villain, who had
seduced his mistress, and afterwards deserted her and her son. Mr.
Thomas Esmond also recognized Pastoureau at once, besought him to calm
his indignation, and not to bring a crowd round about them; and bade
him to enter into the tavern, out of which he had just stepped, when
he would give him any explanation. Pastoureau entered, and heard the
landlord order the drawer to show Captain Thomas to a room; it was by
his Christian name that your father was familiarly called at his tavern
haunts, which, to say the truth, were none of the most reputable.

"I mu