uchess, "you know whose fault it is that there are
no such dukes in the Esmond family too, and how that little scheme of a
certain lady miscarried."

Esmond's friend, Dick Steele, who was in waiting on the Prince, heard
the controversy between the ladies at court. "And faith," says Dick, "I
think, Harry, thy kinswoman had the worst of it."

He could not keep the story quiet; 'twas all over the coffee-houses ere
night; it was printed in a News Letter before a month was over, and "The
reply of her Grace the Duchess of M-rlb-r-gh to a Popish Lady of the
Court, once a favorite of the late K--- J-m-s," was printed in half a
dozen places, with a note stating that "this duchess, when the head
of this lady's family came by his death lately in a fatal duel, never
rested until she got a pension for the orphan heir, and widow, from her
Majesty's bounty." The squabble did not advance poor Esmond's promotion
much, and indeed made him so ashamed of himself that he dared not show
his face at the Commander-in-Chief's levees again.

During those eighteen months which had passed since Esmond saw his dear
mistress, her good father, the old Dean, quitted this life, firm in his
principles to the very last, and enjoining his family always to remember
that the Queen's brother, King James the Third, was their rightful
sovereign. He made a very edifying end, as his daughter told Esmond, and
not a little to her surprise, after his death (for he had lived always
very poorly) my lady found that her father had left no less a sum than
3,000L. behind him, which he bequeathed to her.

With this little fortune Lady Castlewood was enabled, when her
daughter's turn at Court came, to come to London, where she took a small
genteel house at Kensington, in the neighborhood of the Court, bringing
her children with her, and here it was that Esmond found his friends.

As for the young lord, his university career had ended rather abruptly.
Honest Tusher, his governor, had found my young gentleman quite
ungovernable. My lord worried his life away with tricks; and broke out,
as home-bred lads will, into a hundred youthful extravagances, so that
Dr. Bentley, the new master of Trinity, thought fit to write to the
Viscountess Castlewood, my lord's mother, and beg her to remove the
young nobleman from a college where he declined to learn, and where he
only did harm by his riotous example. Indeed, I believe he nearly set
fire to Nevil's Court, that beautiful new qu