uce into his first confession. Some misgivings
Esmond might have, upon receiving Frank's letter, and knowing into what
hands the boy had fallen; but whatever these misgivings were, he kept them
to himself, not caring to trouble his mistress with any fears that might
be groundless.

However, the next mail which came from Bruxelles, after Frank had received
his mother's letter there, brought back a joint composition from himself
and his wife, who could spell no better than her young scapegrace of a
husband, full of expressions of thanks, love, and duty to the dowager
viscountess, as my poor lady now was styled; and along with this letter
(which was read in a family council, namely, the viscountess, Mistress
Beatrix, and the writer of this memoir, and which was pronounced to be
vulgar by the maid of honour, and felt to be so by the other two), there
came a private letter for Colonel Esmond from poor Frank, with another
dismal commission for the colonel to execute, at his best opportunity; and
this was to announce that Frank had seen fit, "by the exhortation of Mr.
Holt, the influence of his Clotilda, and the blessing of Heaven and the
saints," says my lord, demurely, "to change his religion, and be received
into the bosom of that Church of which his sovereign, many of his family,
and the greater part of the civilized world, were members." And his
lordship added a postscript, of which Esmond knew the inspiring genius
very well, for it had the genuine twang of the seminary, and was quite
unlike poor Frank's ordinary style of writing and thinking; in which he
reminded Colonel Esmond that he too was, by birth, of that Church; and
that his mother and sister should have his lordship's prayers to the
saints (an inestimable benefit, truly!) for their conversion.

If Esmond had wanted to keep this secret he could not; for a day or two
after receiving this letter, a notice from Bruxelles appeared in the
_Post-Boy_, and other prints, announcing that "a young Irish lord, the
Viscount C-stle-w--d, just come to his majority, and who had served the
last campaigns with great credit, as aide de camp to his grace the Duke of
Marlborough, had declared for the Popish religion at Bruxelles, and had
walked in a procession barefoot, with a wax taper in his hand." The
notorious Mr. Holt, who had been employed as a Jacobite agent during the
last reign, and many times pardoned by King William, had been, the
_Post-Boy_ said, the agent of this conver