the field, not attached to any regiment, but under Webb’s orders.  What must have been the continued agonies of fears* and apprehensions which racked the gentle breasts of wives and matrons in those dreadful days, when every Gazette brought accounts of deaths and battles, and when the present anxiety over, and the beloved person escaped, the doubt still remained that a battle might be fought, possibly, of which the next Flanders letter would bring the account; so they, the poor tender creatures, had to go on sickening and trembling through the whole campaign.  Whatever these terrors were on the part of Esmond’s mistress, (and that tenderest of women must have felt them most keenly for both her sons, as she called them), she never allowed them outwardly to appear, but hid her apprehension, as she did her charities and devotion.  ’Twas only by chance that Esmond, wandering in Kensington, found his mistress coming out of a mean cottage there, and heard that she had a score of poor retainers, whom she visited and comforted in their sickness and poverty, and who blessed her daily.  She attended the early church daily (though of a Sunday, especially, she encouraged and advanced all sorts of cheerfulness and innocent gayety in her little household):  and by notes entered into a table-book of hers at this time, and devotional compositions writ with a sweet artless fervor, such as the best divines could not surpass, showed how fond her heart was, how humble and pious her spirit, what pangs of apprehension she endured silently, and with what a faithful reliance she committed the care of those she loved to the awful Dispenser of death and life.

     * What indeed?  Psm. xci. 2, 3, 7.—­R.  E.

As for her ladyship at Chelsey, Esmond’s newly adopted mother, she was now of an age when the danger of any second party doth not disturb the rest much.  She cared for trumps more than for most things in life.  She was firm enough in her own faith, but no longer very bitter against ours.  She had a very good-natured, easy French director, Monsieur Gauthier by name, who was a gentleman of the world, and would take a hand of cards with Dean Atterbury, my lady’s neighbor at Chelsey, and was well with all the High Church party.  No doubt Monsieur Gauthier knew what Esmond’s peculiar position was, for he corresponded with Holt, and always treated Colonel Esmond with particular respect and kindness; but for good reasons the Colonel and the Abbe never spoke on this matter together, and so they remained perfect good friends.

All the frequenters of my Lady of Chelsey’s house were of the Tory and High Church party.  Madame Beatrix was as frantic about the King as her elderly kinswoman:  she wore his picture on her heart; she had a piece of his hair; she vowed he was the most injured, and gallant, and accomplished, and unfortunate, and beautiful of princes.  Steele, who quarrelled with very many of his Tory friends, but never with Esmond, used to tell the Colonel that