hing, if not good and great,
nevertheless grand, if her ambition, though worldly, had in it a touch
of nobility. But this poor creature is made with her bleared blind eyes
to fall into the very lowest depths of feminine ignobility. One lover
comes after another. Harry Esmond is, of course, the lover with whom the
reader interests himself. At last there comes a duke,--fifty years old,
indeed, but with semi-royal appanages. As his wife she will become a
duchess, with many diamonds, and be her Excellency. The man is stern,
cold, and jealous; but she does not doubt for a moment. She is to be
Duchess of Hamilton, and towers already in pride of place above her
mother, and her kinsman lover, and all her belongings. The story here,
with its little incidents of birth, and blood, and ignoble pride, and
gratified ambition, with a dash of true feminine nobility on the part of
the girl's mother, is such as to leave one with the impression that it
has hardly been beaten in English prose fiction. Then, in the last
moment, the duke is killed in a duel, and the news is brought to the
girl by Esmond. She turns upon him and rebukes him harshly. Then she
moves away, and feels in a moment that there is nothing left for her in
this world, and that she can only throw herself upon devotion for
consolation. "I am best in my own room and by myself," she said. Her
eyes were quite dry, nor did Esmond ever see them otherwise, save once,
in respect of that grief. She gave him a cold hand as she went out.
"Thank you, brother," she said in a low voice, and with a simplicity
more touching than tears, "all that you have said is true and kind, and
I will go away and will ask pardon."

But the consolation coming from devotion did not go far with such a one
as her. We cannot rest on religion merely by saying that we will do so.
Very speedily there comes consolation in another form. Queen Anne is on
her deathbed, and a young Stuart prince appears upon the scene, of whom
some loyal hearts dream that they can make a king. He is such as Stuarts
were, and only walks across the novelist's canvas to show his folly and
heartlessness. But there is a moment in which Beatrix thinks that she
may rise in the world to the proud place of a royal mistress. That is
her last ambition! That is her pride! That is to be her glory! The
bleared eyes can see no clearer than that. But the mock prince passes
away, and nothing but the disgrace of the wish remains.

Such is the stor