s were engraven, preceded her and
bore her cushion; then came her gentlewoman; a little pack of spaniels
barking and frisking about preceded the austere huntress--then, behold, the
viscountess herself "dropping odours". Esmond recollected from his
childhood that rich aroma of musk which his mother-in-law (for she may be
called so) exhaled. As the sky grows redder and redder towards sunset, so,
in the decline of her years, the cheeks of my lady dowager blushed more
deeply. Her face was illuminated with vermilion, which appeared the
brighter from the white paint employed to set it off. She wore the
ringlets which had been in fashion in King Charles's time; whereas the
ladies of King William's had head-dresses like the towers of Cybele. Her
eyes gleamed out from the midst of this queer structure of paint, dyes,
and pomatums. Such was my lady viscountess, Mr. Esmond's father's widow.

He made her such a profound bow as her dignity and relationship merited:
and advanced with the greatest gravity, and once more kissed that hand,
upon the trembling knuckles of which glittered a score of
rings--remembering old times when that trembling hand made him tremble.
"Marchioness," says he, bowing, and on one knee, "is it only the hand I
may have the honour of saluting?" For, accompanying that inward laughter,
which the sight of such an astonishing old figure might well produce in
the young man, there was goodwill too, and the kindness of consanguinity.
She had been his father's wife, and was his grandfather's daughter. She
had suffered him in old days, and was kind to him now after her fashion.
And now that bar-sinister was removed from Esmond's thought, and that
secret opprobrium no longer cast upon his mind, he was pleased to feel
family ties and own them--perhaps secretly vain of the sacrifice he had
made, and to think that he, Esmond, was really the chief of his house, and
only prevented by his own magnanimity from advancing his claim.

At least, ever since he had learned that secret from his poor patron on
his dying bed, actually as he was standing beside it, he had felt an
independency which he had never known before, and which since did not
desert him. So he called his old aunt marchioness, but with an air as if
he was the Marquis of Esmond who so addressed her.

Did she read in the young gentleman's eyes, which had now no fear of hers
or their superannuated authority, that he knew or suspected the truth
about his birth? She ga