oment to quarrel with Harry and to be unjust to him. He had been
ill, and had gone away to the wars, and then she had learned the truth,
and had been wretched enough. But when he comes back, and she sees him,
by chance at first, as the anthem is being sung in the cathedral choir,
as she is saying her prayers, her heart flows over with tenderness to
him. "I knew you would come back," she said; "and to-day, Harry, in the
anthem when they sang it,--'When the Lord turned the captivity of Zion
we were like them that dream,'--I thought, yes, like them that
dream,--them that dream. And then it went on, 'They that sow in tears
shall reap in joy, and he that goeth forth and weepeth, shall doubtless
come home again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.' I looked
up from the book and saw you. I was not surprised when I saw you. I knew
you would come, my dear, and saw the gold sunshine round your head." And
so it goes on, running into expressions of heartmelting tenderness. And
yet she herself does not know that her own heart is seeking his with
all a woman's love. She is still willing that he should possess Beatrix.
"I would call you my son," she says, "sooner than the greatest prince in
Europe." But she warns him of the nature of her own girl. "'Tis for my
poor Beatrix I tremble, whose headstrong will affrights me, whose
jealous temper, and whose vanity no prayers of mine can cure." It is but
very gradually that Esmond becomes aware of the truth. Indeed, he has
not become altogether aware of it till the tale closes. The reader does
not see that transfer of affection from the daughter to the mother which
would fail to reach his sympathy. In the last page of the last chapter
it is told that it is so,--that Esmond marries Lady Castlewood,--but it
is not told till all the incidents of the story have been completed.

But of the three characters I have named, Beatrix is the one that has
most strongly exercised the writer's powers, and will most interest the
reader. As far as outward person is concerned she is very lovely,--so
charming, that every man that comes near to her submits himself to her
attractions and caprices. It is but rarely that a novelist can succeed
in impressing his reader with a sense of female loveliness. The attempt
is made so frequently,--comes so much as a matter of course in every
novel that is written, and fails so much as a matter of course, that the
reader does not feel the failure. There are things whi