e down and despises it for being broken. It may be
worthless--true: but who had the keeping of it, and who shattered it?

Harry, who would have given his life to make his benefactress and her
husband happy, bethought him, now that he saw what my lord's state of mind
was, and that he really had a great deal of that love left in his heart,
and ready for his wife's acceptance if she would take it, whether he could
not be a means of reconciliation between these two persons, whom he
revered the most in the world. And he cast about how he should break a
part of his mind to his mistress, and warn her that in his, Harry's
opinion, at least, her husband was still her admirer, and even her lover.

But he found the subject a very difficult one to handle, when he ventured
to remonstrate, which he did in the very gravest tone (for long confidence
and reiterated proofs of devotion and loyalty had given him a sort of
authority in the house, which he resumed as soon as ever he returned to
it); and with a speech that should have some effect, as, indeed, it was
uttered with the speaker's own heart, he ventured most gently to hint to
his adored mistress, that she was doing her husband harm by her ill
opinion of him, and that the happiness of all the family depended upon
setting her right.

She, who was ordinarily calm and most gentle, and full of smiles and soft
attentions, flushed up when young Esmond so spoke to her, and rose from
her chair, looking at him with a haughtiness and indignation that he had
never before known her to display. She was quite an altered being for that
moment; and looked an angry princess insulted by a vassal.

"Have you ever heard me utter a word in my lord's disparagement?" she
asked hastily, hissing out her words, and stamping her foot.

"Indeed, no," Esmond said, looking down.

"Are you come to me as his ambassador--_You?_" she continued.

"I would sooner see peace between you than anything else in the world,"
Harry answered, "and would go of any embassy that had that end."

"So _you_ are my lord's go-between?" she went on, not regarding this
speech. "You are sent to bid me back into slavery again, and inform me
that my lord's favour is graciously restored to his handmaid? He is weary
of Covent Garden, is he, that he comes home and would have the fatted calf
killed?"

"There's good authority for it, surely," said Esmond.

"For a son, yes; but my lord is not my son. It was he who cast me away
from hi