my mistress
forgave it," Harry Esmond said; "and remember how eagerly she watched your
lordship's return, and how sadly she turned away when she saw your cold
looks."

"Damme!" cries out my lord; "would you have had me wait and catch the
small-pox? Where the deuce had been the good of that? I'll bear danger
with any man--but not useless danger--no, no. Thank you for nothing. And--you
nod your head, and I know very well, Parson Harry, what you mean. There
was the--the other affair to make her angry. But is a woman never to
forgive a husband who goes a-tripping? Do you take me for a saint?"

"Indeed, sir, I do not," says Harry, with a smile.

"Since that time my wife's as cold as the statue at Charing Cross. I tell
thee she has no forgiveness in her, Henry. Her coldness blights my whole
life, and sends me to the punch-bowl, or driving about the country. My
children are not mine, but hers, when we are together. 'Tis only when she
is out of sight with her abominable cold glances, that run through me,
that they'll come to me, and that I dare to give them so much as a kiss;
and that's why I take 'em and love 'em in other people's houses, Harry.
I'm killed by the very virtue of that proud woman. Virtue! give me the
virtue that can forgive; give me the virtue that thinks not of preserving
itself, but of making other folks happy. Damme, what matters a scar or two
if 'tis got in helping a friend in ill fortune?"

And my lord again slapped the table, and took a great draught from the
tankard. Harry Esmond admired as he listened to him, and thought how the
poor preacher of this self-sacrifice had fled from the small-pox, which
the lady had borne so cheerfully, and which had been the cause of so much
disunion in the lives of all in this house. "How well men preach," thought
the young man, "and each is the example in his own sermon. How each has a
story in a dispute, and a true one, too, and both are right, or wrong as
you will!" Harry's heart was pained within him, to watch the struggles and
pangs that tore the breast of this kind, manly friend and protector.

"Indeed, sir," said he, "I wish to God that my mistress could hear you
speak as I have heard you; she would know much that would make her life
the happier, could she hear it." But my lord flung away with one of his
oaths, and a jeer; he said that Parson Harry was a good fellow; but that
as for women, all women were alike--all jades and heartless. So a man
dashes a fine vas