ment and people consecrate the
Sovereign, not bishops, nor genealogies, nor oils, nor coronations."
The eager gaze of the young Prince, watching every movement of Beatrix,
haunted Esmond and pursued him. The Prince's figure appeared before him
in his feverish dreams many times that night. He wished the deed undone
for which he had labored so. He was not the first that has regretted his
own act, or brought about his own undoing. Undoing? Should he write
that word in his late years? No, on his knees before heaven, rather be
thankful for what then he deemed his misfortune, and which hath caused
the whole subsequent happiness of his life.

Esmond's man, honest John Lockwood, had served his master and the family
all his life, and the Colonel knew that he could answer for John's
fidelity as for his own. John returned with the horses from Rochester
betimes the next morning, and the Colonel gave him to understand that on
going to Kensington, where he was free of the servants' hall, and indeed
courting Miss Beatrix's maid, he was to ask no questions, and betray no
surprise, but to vouch stoutly that the young gentleman he should see in
a red coat there was my Lord Viscount Castlewood, and that his attendant
in gray was Monsieur Baptiste the Frenchman. He was to tell his friends
in the kitchen such stories as he remembered of my Lord Viscount's youth
at Castlewood; what a wild boy he was; how he used to drill Jack and
cane him, before ever he was a soldier; everything, in fine, he knew
respecting my Lord Viscount's early days. Jack's ideas of painting
had not been much cultivated during his residence in Flanders with his
master; and, before my young lord's return, he had been easily got to
believe that the picture brought over from Paris, and now hanging in
Lady Castlewood's drawing-room, was a perfect likeness of her son, the
young lord. And the domestics having all seen the picture many times,
and catching but a momentary imperfect glimpse of the two strangers on
the night of their arrival, never had a reason to doubt the fidelity
of the portrait; and next day, when they saw the original of the piece
habited exactly as he was represented in the painting, with the same
periwig, ribbons, and uniform of the Guard, quite naturally addressed
the gentleman as my Lord Castlewood, my Lady Viscountess's son.

The secretary of the night previous was now the viscount; the viscount
wore the secretary's gray frock; and John Lockwood was ins