eatrix took was to look so imperial and lovely
that the modest downcast young lady could not appear beside her, and
Lord Ashburnham, who had his reasons for wishing to avoid her, slunk
away quite shamefaced, and very early. This time his Grace the Duke of
Hamilton, whom Esmond had seen about her before, was constant at Miss
Beatrix's side: he was one of the most splendid gentlemen of Europe,
accomplished by books, by travel, by long command of the best company,
distinguished as a statesman, having been ambassador in King Williamn's
time, and a noble speaker in the Scots' Parliament, where he had led the
party that was against the Union, and though now five or six and forty
years of age, a gentleman so high in stature, accomplished in wit, and
favored in person, that he might pretend to the hand of any Princess in
Europe.

"Should you like the Duke for a cousin?" says Mr. Secretary St. John,
whispering to Colonel Esmond in French; "it appears that the widower
consoles himself."

But to return to our little Spectator paper and the conversation which
grew out of it. Miss Beatrix at first was quite BIT (as the phrase of
that day was) and did not "smoke" the authorship of the story; indeed
Esmond had tried to imitate as well as he could Mr. Steele's manner
(as for the other author of the Spectator, his prose style I think is
altogether inimitable); and Dick, who was the idlest and best-natured of
men, would have let the piece pass into his journal and go to posterity
as one of his own lucubrations, but that Esmond did not care to have
a lady's name whom he loved sent forth to the world in a light so
unfavorable. Beatrix pished and psha'd over the paper; Colonel Esmond
watching with no little interest her countenance as she read it.

"How stupid your friend Mr. Steele becomes!" cries Miss Beatrix. "Epsom
and Tunbridge! Will he never have done with Epsom and Tunbridge, and
with beaux at church, and Jocastas and Lindamiras? Why does he not call
women Nelly and Betty, as their godfathers and godmothers did for them
in their baptism?"

"Beatrix. Beatrix!" says her mother, "speak gravely of grave things."

"Mamma thinks the Church Catechism came from heaven, I believe,"
says Beatrix, with a laugh, "and was brought down by a bishop from a
mountain. Oh, how I used to break my heart over it! Besides, I had a
Popish godmother, mamma; why did you give me one?"

"I gave you the Queen's name," says her mother blushing. "And a very