h
blowsy smiles; the ladies'-maids, whether of the French or the English
nation, smirked and giggled in his behalf; the pretty porter's daughter
at the lodge had always a kind word in reply to his. Madame de Bernstein
took note of all these things, and, though she said nothing, watched
carefully the boy's disposition and behaviour.

Who can say how old Lady Maria Esmond was? Books of the Peerage were
not so many in those days as they are in our blessed times, and I cannot
tell to a few years, or even a lustre or two. When Will used to say she
was five-and-thirty, he was abusive, and, besides, was always given
to exaggeration. Maria was Will's half-sister. She and my lord were
children of the late Lord Castlewood's first wife, a German lady, whom,
'tis known, my lord married in the time of Queen Anne's wars. Baron
Bernstein, who married Maria's Aunt Beatrix, Bishop Tusher's widow, was
also a German, a Hanoverian nobleman, and relative of the first Lady
Castlewood. If my Lady Maria was born under George I., and his Majesty
George II. had been thirty years on the throne, how could she be
seven-and-twenty, as she told Harry Warrington she was? "I am old,
child," she used to say. She used to call Harry "child" when they were
alone. "I am a hundred years old. I am seven-and-twenty. I might be your
mother almost." To which Harry would reply, "Your ladyship might be the
mother of all the cupids, I am sure. You don't look twenty, on my word
you do Dot!"

Lady Maria looked any age you liked. She was a fair beauty with a
dazzling white and red complexion, an abundance of fair hair which
flowed over her shoulders, and beautiful round arms which showed to
uncommon advantage when she played at billiards with cousin Harry. When
she had to stretch across the table to make a stroke, that youth caught
glimpses of a little ankle, a little clocked stocking, and a little
black satin slipper with a little red heel, which filled him with
unutterable rapture, and made him swear that there never was such a
foot, ankle, clocked stocking, satin slipper in the world. And yet, oh,
you foolish Harry! your mother's foot was ever so much more slender, and
half an inch shorter, than Lady Maria's. But, somehow, boys do not look
at their mammas' slippers and ankles with rapture.

No doubt Lady Maria was very kind to Harry when they were alone. Before
her sister, aunt, stepmother, she made light of him, calling him a
simpleton, a chit, and who knows wh