men that are accustomed to better. We are only fit to be your
worship's handmaids, and your pleasures must of necessity lie elsewhere
than at home."

"Curse me, Rachel, if I know now whether thou art in earnest or not," said
my lord.

"In earnest, my lord!" says she, still clinging by one of her children.
"Is there much subject here for joke?" And she made him a grand curtsy,
and, giving a stately look to Harry Esmond, which seemed to say,
"Remember; you understand me, though he does not," she left the room with
her children.

"Since she found out that confounded Hexton business," my lord said--"and
be hanged to them that told her!--she has not been the same woman. She, who
used to be as humble as a milkmaid, is as proud as a princess," says my
lord. "Take my counsel, Harry Esmond, and keep clear of women. Since I
have had anything to do with the jades, they have given me nothing but
disgust. I had a wife at Tangier, with whom, as she couldn't speak a word
of my language, you'd have thought I might lead a quiet life. But she
tried to poison me, because she was jealous of a Jew girl. There was your
aunt, for aunt she is--aunt Jezebel, a pretty life your father led with
_her_, and here's my lady. When I saw her on a pillion riding behind the
dean her father, she looked and was such a baby, that a sixpenny doll
might have pleased her. And now you see what she is--hands off,
highty-tighty, high and mighty, an empress couldn't be grander. Pass us
the tankard, Harry, my boy. A mug of beer and a toast at morn, says my
host. A toast and a mug of beer at noon, says my dear. D----n it, Polly
loves a mug of ale, too, and laced with brandy, by Jove!" Indeed, I
suppose they drank it together; for my lord was often thick in his speech
at mid-day dinner; and at night at supper, speechless altogether.

Harry Esmond's departure resolved upon, it seemed as if the Lady
Castlewood, too, rejoiced to lose him; for more than once, when the lad,
ashamed perhaps at his own secret eagerness to go away (at any rate
stricken with sadness at the idea of leaving those from whom he had
received so many proofs of love and kindness inestimable), tried to
express to his mistress his sense of gratitude to her, and his sorrow at
quitting those who had so sheltered and tended a nameless and houseless
orphan, Lady Castlewood cut short his protests of love and his
lamentations, and would hear of no grief, but only look forward to Harry's
fame and prospec