aid a slap on the face soon after she
heard he was going away. Mistress Beatrix's woman, the fellow said, came
down to the servants' hall, crying, and with the mark of a blow still on
her cheek: but Esmond peremptorily ordered him to fall back and be silent,
and rode on with thoughts enough of his own to occupy him--some sad ones,
some inexpressibly dear and pleasant.

His mistress, from whom he had been a year separated, was his dearest
mistress again. The family from which he had been parted, and which he
loved with the fondest devotion, was his family once more. If Beatrix's
beauty shone upon him, it was with a friendly lustre, and he could regard
it with much such a delight as he brought away after seeing the beautiful
pictures of the smiling Madonnas in the convent at Cadiz, when he was
dispatched thither with a flag: and as for his mistress, 'twas difficult
to say with what a feeling he regarded her. 'Twas happiness to have seen
her: 'twas no great pang to part; a filial tenderness, a love that was at
once respect and protection, filled his mind as he thought of her; and
near her or far from her, and from that day until now, and from now till
death is past, and beyond it, he prays that sacred flame may ever burn.

Chapter IX. I Make The Campaign Of 1704

Mr. Esmond rode up to London then, where, if the dowager had been angry at
the abrupt leave of absence he took, she was mightily pleased at his
speedy return.

He went immediately and paid his court to his new general, General Lumley,
who received him graciously, having known his father, and also, he was
pleased to say, having had the very best accounts of Mr. Esmond from the
officer whose aide de camp he had been at Vigo. During this winter Mr.
Esmond was gazetted to a lieutenancy in Brigadier Webb's regiment of
Fusiliers, then with their colonel in Flanders; but being now attached to
the suite of Mr. Lumley, Esmond did not join his own regiment until more
than a year afterwards, and after his return from the campaign of
Blenheim, which was fought the next year. The campaign began very early,
our troops marching out of their quarters before the winter was almost
over, and investing the city of Bonn, on the Rhine, under the duke's
command. His grace joined the army in deep grief of mind, with crape on
his sleeve, and his household in mourning; and the very same packet which
brought the commander-in-chief over, brought letters to the forces which
preceded