ll, I
know she did. And now, she talks of the blessed consolation of religion.
Dear soul! she thinks she is happier for believing, as she must, that
we are all of us wicked and miserable sinners; and this world is only a
pied-a-terre for the good, where they stay for a night, as we do, coming
from Walcote, at that great, dreary, uncomfortable Hounslow Inn, in
those horrid beds--oh, do you remember those horrid beds?--and the
chariot comes and fetches them to heaven the next morning."

"Hush, Beatrix," says Mr. Esmond.

"Hush, indeed. You are a hypocrite, too, Henry, with your grave airs
and your glum face. We are all hypocrites. O dear me! We are all alone,
alone, alone," says poor Beatrix, her fair breast heaving with a sigh.

"It was I that writ every line of that paper, my dear," says Mr. Esmond.
"You are not so worldly as you think yourself, Beatrix, and better than
we believe you. The good we have in us we doubt of; and the happiness
that's to our hand we throw away. You bend your ambition on a great
marriage and establishment--and why? You'll tire of them when you win
them; and be no happier with a coronet on your coach--"

"Than riding pillion with Lubin to market," says Beatrix. "Thank you,
Lubin!"

"I'm a dismal shepherd, to be sure," answers Esmond, with a blush;
"and require a nymph that can tuck my bed-clothes up, and make me
water-gruel. Well, Tom Lockwood can do that. He took me out of the fire
upon his shoulders, and nursed me through my illness as love will scarce
ever do. Only good wages, and a hope of my clothes, and the contents of
my portmanteau. How long was it that Jacob served an apprenticeship for
Rachel?"

"For mamma?" says Beatrix. "It is mamma your honor wants, and that I
should have the happiness of calling you papa?"

Esmond blushed again. "I spoke of a Rachel that a shepherd courted five
thousand years ago; when shepherds were longer lived than now. And my
meaning was, that since I saw you first after our separation--a child
you were then . . ."

"And I put on my best stockings to captivate you, I remember, sir . . ."

"You have had my heart ever since then, such as it was; and such as you
were, I cared for no other woman. What little reputation I have won, it
was that you might be pleased with it: and indeed, it is not much; and
I think a hundred fools in the army have got and deserved quite as much.
Was there something in the air of that dismal old Castlewood that made
us all g