, and I am sure she is a hundred million thousand
times better."

Esmond's kind mistress left the room, carrying her blushes away with
her.

"If we girls at Court could grow such roses as that," continues Beatrix,
with her laugh, "what wouldn't we do to preserve 'em? We'd clip their
stalks and put 'em in salt and water. But those flowers don't bloom
at Hampton Court and Windsor, Henry." She paused for a minute, and the
smile fading away from her April face, gave place to a menacing shower
of tears; "Oh, how good she is, Harry," Beatrix went on to say. "Oh,
what a saint she is! Her goodness frightens me. I'm not fit to live with
her. I should be better I think if she were not so perfect. She has had
a great sorrow in her life, and a great secret; and repented of it. It
could not have been my father's death. She talks freely about that; nor
could she have loved him very much--though who knows what we women do
love, and why?"

"What, and why, indeed," says Mr. Esmond.

"No one knows," Beatrix went on, without noticing this interruption
except by a look, "what my mother's life is. She hath been at early
prayer this morning; she passes hours in her closet; if you were to
follow her thither, you would find her at prayers now. She tends the
poor of the place--the horrid dirty poor! She sits through the curate's
sermons--oh, those dreary sermons! And you see on a beau dire; but
good as they are, people like her are not fit to commune with us of the
world. There is always, as it were, a third person present, even when I
and my mother are alone. She can't be frank with me quite; who is always
thinking of the next world, and of her guardian angel, perhaps that's in
company. Oh, Harry, I'm jealous of that guardian angel!" here broke out
Mistress Beatrix. "It's horrid, I know; but my mother's life is all
for heaven, and mine--all for earth. We can never be friends quite; and
then, she cares more for Frank's little finger than she does for me--I
know she does: and she loves you, sir, a great deal too much; and I hate
you for it. I would have had her all to myself; but she wouldn't. In my
childhood, it was my father she loved--(oh, how could she? I remember
him kind and handsome, but so stupid, and not being able to speak after
drinking wine). And then it was Frank; and now, it is heaven and the
clergyman. How I would have loved her! From a child I used to be in a
rage that she loved anybody but me; but she loved you all better--a