! Yes, she was elderly, there was no doubt about it. When
she came to that horrible den in Cursitor Street and the tears washed
her rouge off, why, she looked as old as his mother! her face was all
wrinkled and yellow, and as he thought of her he felt just such a qualm
as he had when she was taken ill that day in the coach on their road
to Tunbridge. What would his mother say when he brought her home, and,
Lord, what battles there would be between them! He would go and live on
one of the plantations--the farther from home the better--and have a
few negroes, and farm as best he might, and hunt a good deal; but at
Castlewood or in her own home, such as he could make it for her, what a
life for poor Maria, who had been used to go to court and to cards and
balls and assemblies every night! If he could be but the overseer of the
estates--oh, he would be an honest factor, and try and make up for his
useless life and extravagance in these past days! Five thousand pounds,
all his patrimony and the accumulations of his long minority squandered
in six months! He a beggar, except for dear George's kindness, with
nothing in life left to him but an old wife,--a pretty beggar, dressed
out in velvet and silver lace forsooth--the poor lad was arrayed in his
best clothes--a pretty figure he had made in Europe, and a nice end he
was come to! With all his fine friends at White's and Newmarket, with
all his extravagance, had he been happy a single day since he had been
in Europe? Yes, three days, four days, yesterday evening, when he had
been with dear dear Mrs. Lambert, and those affectionate kind girls, and
that brave good Colonel. And the Colonel was right when he rebuked him
for his spendthrift follies, and he had been a brute to be angry as he
had been, and God bless them all for their generous exertions in his
behalf! Such were the thoughts which Harry put into his pipe, and he
smoked them whilst he waited his brother's return from Madame Bernstein.

CHAPTER LIV. During which Harry sits smoking his Pipe at Home

The maternal grandfather of our Virginians, the Colonel Esmond of whom
frequent mention has been made, and who had quitted England to reside in
the New World, had devoted some portion of his long American leisure
to the composition of the memoirs of his early life. In these volumes,
Madame de Bernstein (Mrs. Beatrice Esmond was her name as a
spinster) played a very considerable part; and as George had read his
grandfa