remember, sir."

"You have had my heart ever since then, such as it was; and such as you
were, I cared for no other woman. What little reputation I have won, it
was that you might be pleased with it: and, indeed, it is not much; and I
think a hundred fools in the army have got and deserved quite as much. Was
there something in the air of that dismal old Castlewood that made us all
gloomy, and dissatisfied, and lonely under its ruined old roof? We were
all so, even when together and united, as it seemed, following our
separate schemes, each as we sat round the table."

"Dear, dreary old place!" cries Beatrix. "Mamma hath never had the heart
to go back thither since we left it, when--never mind how many years ago,"
and she flung back her curls, and looked over her fair shoulder at the
mirror superbly, as if she said, "Time, I defy you."

"Yes," says Esmond, who had the art, as she owned, of divining many of her
thoughts. "You can afford to look in the glass still; and only be pleased
by the truth it tells you. As for me, do you know what my scheme is? I
think of asking Frank to give me the Virginia estate King Charles gave our
grandfather." (She gave a superb curtsy, as much as to say, "Our
grandfather, indeed! Thank you, Mr. Bastard.") "Yes, I know you are
thinking of my bar-sinister, and so am I. A man cannot get over it in this
country; unless, indeed, he wears it across a king's arms, when 'tis a
highly honourable coat: and I am thinking of retiring into the
plantations, and building myself a wigwam in the woods, and perhaps, if I
want company, suiting myself with a squaw. We will send your ladyship furs
over for the winter; and, when you are old, we'll provide you with
tobacco. I am not quite clever enough, or not rogue enough--I know not
which--for the Old World. I may make a place for myself in the new, which
is not so full; and found a family there. When you are a mother yourself,
and a great lady, perhaps I shall send you over from the plantation some
day a little barbarian that is half Esmond half Mohock, and you will be
kind to him for his father's sake, who was, after all, your kinsman; and
whom you loved a little."

"What folly you are talking, Harry!" says Miss Beatrix, looking with her
great eyes.

"'Tis sober earnest," says Esmond. And, indeed, the scheme had been
dwelling a good deal in his mind for some time past, and especially since
his return home, when he found how hopeless, and even degrading t