urnal the space it occupied in
his time, would weary his kinsmen and women of a hundred years' time
beyond all endurance; and form such a diary of folly and drivelling,
raptures and rage, as no man of ordinary vanity would like to leave behind
him.

The truth is, that, whether she laughed at him or encouraged him; whether
she smiled or was cold, and turned her smiles on another--worldly and
ambitious, as he knew her to be; hard and careless, as she seemed to grow
with her Court life, and a hundred admirers that came to her and left her;
Esmond, do what he would, never could get Beatrix out of his mind; thought
of her constantly at home or away. If he read his name in a _Gazette_, or
escaped the shot of a cannon-ball or a greater danger in the campaign, as
has happened to him more than once, the instant thought after the honour
achieved or the danger avoided, was "What will _she_ say of it?" "Will
this distinction or the idea of this peril elate her or touch her, so as
to be better inclined towards me?" He could no more help this passionate
fidelity of temper than he could help the eyes he saw with--one or the
other seemed a part of his nature; and knowing every one of her faults as
well as the keenest of her detractors, and the folly of an attachment to
such a woman, of which the fruition could never bring him happiness for
above a week, there was yet a charm about this Circe from which the poor
deluded gentleman could not free himself; and for a much longer period
than Ulysses (another middle-aged officer, who had travelled much, and
been in the foreign wars), Esmond felt himself enthralled and besotted by
the wiles of this enchantress. Quit her! He could no more quit her, as the
Cymon of this story was made to quit his false one, than he could lose his
consciousness of yesterday. She had but to raise her finger, and he would
come back from ever so far; she had but to say, "I have discarded
such-and-such an adorer," and the poor infatuated wretch would be sure to
come and _roder_ about her mother's house, willing to be put on the ranks
of suitors, though he knew he might be cast off the next week. If he were
like Ulysses in his folly at least, she was in so far like Penelope, that
she had a crowd of suitors, and undid day after day and night after night
the handiwork of fascination and the web of coquetry with which she was
wont to allure and entertain them.

Part of her coquetry may have come from her position about t