n uninterruptedly: the mother
and daughter learning with surprising quickness; the latter by fits and
starts only, and as suited her wayward humor. As for the little lord,
it must be owned that he took after his father in the matter of
learning--liked marbles and play, and the great horse and the little one
which his father brought him, and on which he took him out a-hunting, a
great deal better than Corderius and Lily; marshalled the village boys,
and had a little court of them, already flogging them, and domineering
over them with a fine imperious spirit, that made his father laugh when
he beheld it, and his mother fondly warn him. The cook had a son, the
woodman had two, the big lad at the porter's lodge took his cuffs
and his orders. Doctor Tusher said he was a young nobleman of gallant
spirit; and Harry Esmond, who was his tutor, and eight years his little
lordship's senior, had hard work sometimes to keep his own temper, and
hold his authority over his rebellious little chief and kinsman.

In a couple of years after that calamity had befallen which had robbed
Lady Castlewood of a little--a very little--of her beauty, and her
careless husband's heart (if the truth must be told, my lady had found
not only that her reign was over, but that her successor was appointed,
a Princess of a noble house in Drury Lane somewhere, who was installed
and visited by my lord at the town eight miles off--pudet haec opprobria
dicere nobis)--a great change had taken place in her mind, which, by
struggles only known to herself, at least never mentioned to any one,
and unsuspected by the person who caused the pain she endured--had
been schooled into such a condition as she could not very likely have
imagined possible a score of months since, before her misfortunes had
begun.

She had oldened in that time as people do who suffer silently great
mental pain; and learned much that she had never suspected before. She
was taught by that bitter teacher Misfortune. A child the mother of
other children, but two years back her lord was a god to her; his words
her law; his smile her sunshine; his lazy commonplaces listened to
eagerly, as if they were words of wisdom--all his wishes and freaks
obeyed with a servile devotion. She had been my lord's chief slave and
blind worshipper. Some women bear farther than this, and submit not only
to neglect but to unfaithfulness too--but here this lady's allegiance
had failed her. Her spirit rebelled, and dis