e him a thousand
times happier than my poor girl ever could."

The rupture, whatever its cause was (I heard the scandal, but indeed shall
not take pains to repeat at length in this diary the trumpery coffee-house
story), caused a good deal of low talk; and Mr. Esmond was present at my
lord's appearance at the birthday with his bride, over whom the revenge
that Beatrix took was to look so imperial and lovely that the modest
downcast young lady could not appear beside her, and Lord Ashburnham, who
had his reasons for wishing to avoid her, slunk away quite shamefaced, and
very early. This time his grace the Duke of Hamilton, whom Esmond had seen
about her before, was constant at Miss Beatrix's side: he was one of the
most splendid gentlemen of Europe, accomplished by books, by travel, by
long command of the best company, distinguished as a statesman, having
been ambassador in King William's time, and a noble speaker in the Scots
Parliament, where he had led the party that was against the union, and
though now five- or six-and-forty years of age, a gentleman so high in
stature, accomplished in wit, and favoured in person, that he might
pretend to the hand of any princess in Europe.

"Should you like the duke for a cousin?" says Mr. Secretary St. John,
whispering to Colonel Esmond in French; "it appears that the widower
consoles himself."

But to return to our little _Spectator_ paper and the conversation which
grew out of it. Miss Beatrix at first was quite _bit_ (as the phrase of
that day was) and did not "smoke" the authorship of the story: indeed
Esmond had tried to imitate as well as he could Mr. Steele's manner (as
for the other author of the _Spectator_, his prose style I think is
altogether inimitable); and Dick, who was the idlest and best-natured of
men, would have let the piece pass into his journal and go to posterity as
one of his own lucubrations, but that Esmond did not care to have a lady's
name whom he loved sent forth to the world in a light so unfavourable.
Beatrix pished and psha'd over the paper; Colonel Esmond watching with no
little interest her countenance as she read it.

"How stupid your friend Mr. Steele becomes!" cries Miss Beatrix. "Epsom
and Tunbridge! Will he never have done with Epsom and Tunbridge, and with
beaux at church, and Jocastas and Lindamiras? Why does he not call women
Nelly and Betty, as their godfathers and godmothers did for them in their
baptism?"

"Beatrix, Beatrix!" says