And he laughed, and sprang to the ground with no small agility, looking handsome and red, within a jolly face and brown hair, like a Beef-eater; Esmond kneeling again, as soon as his patron had descended, performed his homage, and then went to greet the little Beatrix, and help her from her horse.

“Fie! how yellow you look,” she said; “and there are one, two, red holes in your face;” which, indeed, was very true; Harry Esmond’s harsh countenance bearing, as long as it continued to be a human face, the marks of the disease.

My lord laughed again, in high good-humor.

“D—–­ it!” said he, with one of his usual oaths, “the little slut sees everything.  She saw the Dowager’s paint t’other day, and asked her why she wore that red stuff—­didn’t you, Trix? and the Tower; and St. James’s; and the play; and the Prince George, and the Princess Anne—­didn’t you, Trix?”

“They are both very fat, and smelt of brandy,” the child said.

Papa roared with laughing.

“Brandy!” he said.  “And how do you know, Miss Pert?”

“Because your lordship smells of it after supper, when I embrace you before you go to bed,” said the young lady, who, indeed, was as pert as her father said, and looked as beautiful a little gipsy as eyes ever gazed on.

“And now for my lady,” said my lord, going up the stairs, and passing under the tapestry curtain that hung before the drawing-room door.  Esmond remembered that noble figure, handsomely arrayed in scarlet.  Within the last few months he himself had grown from a boy to be a man, and with his figure his thoughts had shot up, and grown manly.

My lady’s countenance, of which Harry Esmond was accustomed to watch the changes, and with a solicitous affection to note and interpret the signs of gladness or care, wore a sad and depressed look for many weeks after her lord’s return:  during which it seemed as if, by caresses and entreaties, she strove to win him back from some ill humor he had, and which he did not choose to throw off.  In her eagerness to please him she practised a hundred of those arts which had formerly charmed him, but which seemed now to have lost their potency.  Her songs did not amuse him; and she hushed them and the children when in his presence.  My lord sat silent at his dinner, drinking greatly, his lady opposite to him, looking furtively at his face, though also speechless.  Her silence annoyed him as much as her speech; and he would peevishly, and with an oath, ask her why she held her tongue and looked so glum; or he would roughly check her when speaking, and bid her not talk nonsense.  It seemed as if, since his return, nothing she could do or say could please him.

When a master and mistress are at strife in a house, the subordinates in the family take the one side or the other.  Harry Esmond stood in so great fear of my lord, that he would run a league barefoot to do a message for him; but his attachment for Lady Esmond was such a passion of grateful regard, that to spare her a grief, or to do her a service, he would have given his life daily:  and it was by the very depth and intensity of this regard that he began to divine how unhappy his adored lady’s life was, and that a secret care (for she never spoke of her anxieties) was weighing upon her.