My Lord Duke was as hot as a flame at this salute, but said never a word:  Beatrix made him a proud curtsy, and the two ladies quitted the room together.

“When does your Excellency go for Paris?” asks Colonel Esmond.

“As soon after the ceremony as may be,” his Grace answered. “’Tis fixed for the first of December:  it cannot be sooner.  The equipage will not be ready till then.  The Queen intends the embassy should be very grand—­and I have law business to settle.  That ill-omened Mohun has come, or is coming, to London again:  we are in a lawsuit about my late Lord Gerard’s property; and he hath sent to me to meet him.”

CHAPTER V.

Mohun appears for the last time in this history.

Besides my Lord Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, who for family reasons had kindly promised his protection and patronage to Colonel Esmond, he had other great friends in power now, both able and willing to assist him, and he might, with such allies, look forward to as fortunate advancement in civil life at home as he had got rapid promotion abroad.  His Grace was magnanimous enough to offer to take Mr. Esmond as secretary on his Paris embassy, but no doubt he intended that proposal should be rejected; at any rate, Esmond could not bear the thoughts of attending his mistress farther than the church-door after her marriage, and so declined that offer which his generous rival made him.

Other gentlemen in power were liberal at least of compliments and promises to Colonel Esmond.  Mr. Harley, now become my Lord Oxford and Mortimer, and installed Knight of the Garter on the same day as his Grace of Hamilton had received the same honor, sent to the Colonel to say that a seat in Parliament should be at his disposal presently, and Mr. St. John held out many flattering hopes of advancement to the Colonel when he should enter the House.  Esmond’s friends were all successful, and the most successful and triumphant of all was his dear old commander, General Webb, who was now appointed Lieutenant-General of the Land Forces, and received with particular honor by the Ministry, by the Queen, and the people out of doors, who huzza’d the brave chief when they used to see him in his chariot going to the House or to the Drawing-room, or hobbling on foot to his coach from St. Stephen’s upon his glorious old crutch and stick, and cheered him as loud as they had ever done Marlborough.

That great Duke was utterly disgraced; and honest old Webb dated all his Grace’s misfortunes from Wynendael, and vowed that Fate served the traitor right.  Duchess Sarah had also gone to ruin; she had been forced to give up her keys, and her places, and her pensions:—­“Ah, ah!” says Webb, “she would have locked up three millions of French crowns with her keys had I but been knocked on the head, but I stopped that convoy at Wynendael.”