charming object he had ever looked on. Her golden hair
was shining in the gold of the sun; her complexion was of a dazzling
bloom; her lips smiling, and her eyes beaming with a kindness which made
Harry Esmond's heart to beat with surprise.

"His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my lady," says Mrs. Worksop the
housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond plagued more than he hated),
and the old gentlewoman looked significantly towards the late lord's
picture, as it now is in the family, noble and severe-looking, with his
hand on his sword, and his order on his cloak, which he had from the
emperor during the war on the Danube against the Turk.

Seeing the great and undeniable likeness between this portrait and the
lad, the new viscountess, who had still hold of the boy's hand as she
looked at the picture, blushed and dropped the hand quickly, and walked
down the gallery, followed by Mrs. Worksop.

When the lady came back, Harry Esmond stood exactly in the same spot, and
with his hand as it had fallen when he dropped it on his black coat.

Her heart melted I suppose (indeed she hath since owned as much) at the
notion that she should do anything unkind to any mortal, great or small;
for, when she returned, she had sent away the housekeeper upon an errand
by the door at the farther end of the gallery; and, coming back to the
lad, with a look of infinite pity and tenderness in her eyes, she took his
hand again, placing her other fair hand on his head, and saying some words
to him, which were so kind and said in a voice so sweet, that the boy, who
had never looked upon so much beauty before, felt as if the touch of a
superior being or angel smote him down to the ground, and kissed the fair
protecting hand as he knelt on one knee. To the very last hour of his
life, Esmond remembered the lady as she then spoke and looked, the rings
on her fair hands, the very scent of her robe, the beam of her eyes
lighting up with surprise and kindness, her lips blooming in a smile, the
sun making a golden halo round her hair.

As the boy was yet in this attitude of humility, enters behind him a
portly gentleman, with a little girl of four years old in his hand. The
gentleman burst into a great laugh at the lady and her adorer, with his
little queer figure, his sallow face, and long black hair. The lady
blushed, and seemed to deprecate his ridicule by a look of appeal to her
husband, for it was my lord viscount who now arrived, and whom