the lad said; and indeed he thought and thinks so.

"Will my lord think so when he comes back?" the lady asked with a sigh,
and another look at her Venice glass. "Suppose he should think as you
do, sir, that I am hideous--yes, you said hideous--he will cease to care
for me. 'Tis all men care for in women, our little beauty. Why did he
select me from among my sisters? 'Twas only for that. We reign but for a
day or two: and be sure that Vashti knew Esther was coming."

"Madam," said Mr. Esmond, "Ahasuerus was the Grand Turk, and to change
was the manner of his country, and according to his law."

"You are all Grand Turks for that matter," said my lady, "or would be if
you could. Come, Frank, come, my child. You are well, praised be Heaven.
YOUR locks are not thinned by this dreadful small-pox: nor your poor
face scarred--is it, my angel?"

Frank began to shout and whimper at the idea of such a misfortune. From
the very earliest time the young lord had been taught to admire his
beauty by his mother: and esteemed it as highly as any reigning toast
valued hers.

One day, as he himself was recovering from his fever and illness, a
pang of something like shame shot across young Esmond's breast, as he
remembered that he had never once during his illness given a thought
to the poor girl at the smithy, whose red cheeks but a month ago he
had been so eager to see. Poor Nancy! her cheeks had shared the fate of
roses, and were withered now. She had taken the illness on the same day
with Esmond--she and her brother were both dead of the small-pox, and
buried under the Castlewood yew-trees. There was no bright face looking
now from the garden, or to cheer the old smith at his lonely fireside.
Esmond would have liked to have kissed her in her shroud (like the
lass in Mr. Prior's pretty poem); but she rested many a foot below the
ground, when Esmond after his malady first trod on it.

Doctor Tusher brought the news of this calamity, about which Harry
Esmond longed to ask, but did not like. He said almost the whole village
had been stricken with the pestilence; seventeen persons were dead
of it, among them mentioning the names of poor Nancy and her little
brother. He did not fail to say how thankful we survivors ought to be.
It being this man's business to flatter and make sermons, it must be
owned he was most industrious in it, and was doing the one or the other
all day.

And so Nancy was gone; and Harry Esmond blushed that he ha