girl runs up to her--"Oh, you silly kind mamma," she says, kissing her
again, "that's what Harry would like;" and she broke out into a great
joyful laugh: and Lady Castlewood blushed as bashful as a maid of sixteen.

"Look at her, Harry," whispers Beatrix, running up, and speaking in her
sweet low tones. "Doesn't the blush become her? Isn't she pretty? She
looks younger than I am: and I am sure she is a hundred million thousand
times better."

Esmond's kind mistress left the room, carrying her blushes away with her.

"If we girls at Court could grow such roses as that," continues Beatrix,
with her laugh, "what wouldn't we do to preserve 'em? We'd clip their
stalks and put 'em in salt and water. But those flowers don't bloom at
Hampton Court and Windsor, Henry." She paused for a minute, and the smile
fading away from her April face, gave place to a menacing shower of tears:
"Oh, how good she is, Harry," Beatrix went on to say. "Oh, what a saint
she is! Her goodness frightens me. I'm not fit to live with her. I should
be better, I think, if she were not so perfect. She has had a great sorrow
in her life, and a great secret; and repented of it. It could not have
been my father's death. She talks freely about that; nor could she have
loved him very much--though who knows what we women do love, and why?"

"What, and why, indeed," says Mr. Esmond.

"No one knows," Beatrix went on, without noticing this interruption except
by a look, "what my mother's life is. She hath been at early prayer this
morning: she passes hours in her closet; if you were to follow her
thither, you would find her at prayers now. She tends the poor of the
place--the horrid dirty poor! She sits through the curate's sermons--oh,
those dreary sermons! And you see, _on a beau dire_; but good as they are,
people like her are not fit to commune with us of the world. There is
always, as it were, a third person present, even when I and my mother are
alone. She can't be frank with me quite; who is always thinking of the
next world, and of her guardian angel, perhaps that's in company. Oh,
Harry, I'm jealous of that guardian angel!" here broke out Mistress
Beatrix. "It's horrid, I know; but my mother's life is all for Heaven, and
mine--all for earth. We can never be friends quite; and then, she cares
more for Frank's little finger than she does for me--I know she does: and
she loves you, sir, a great deal too much; and I hate you for it. I would
have had her