of the people he lived with.

"We are prisoners," says she; "in everything but chains, we are prisoners.
Let them come, let them consign me to dungeons, or strike off my head from
this poor little throat" (and she clasped it in her long fingers). "The
blood of the Esmonds will always flow freely for their kings. We are not
like the Churchills--the Judases, who kiss their master and betray him. We
know how to suffer, how even to forgive in the royal cause" (no doubt it
was to that fatal business of losing the place of Groom of the Posset to
which her ladyship alluded, as she did half a dozen times in the day).
"Let the tyrant of Orange bring his rack and his odious Dutch tortures--the
beast! the wretch! I spit upon him and defy him. Cheerfully will I lay
this head upon the block; cheerfully will I accompany my lord to the
scaffold: we will cry, 'God save King James!' with our dying breath, and
smile in the face of the executioner." And she told her page a hundred
times at least of the particulars of the last interview which she had with
his Majesty.

"I flung myself before my liege's feet," she said, "at Salisbury. I
devoted myself--my husband--my house, to his cause. Perhaps he remembered
old times, when Isabella Esmond was young and fair; perhaps he recalled
the day when 'twas not _I_ that knelt--at least he spoke to me with a voice
that reminded _me_ of days gone by. 'Egad!' said his Majesty, 'you should
go to the Prince of Orange, if you want anything.' 'No, sire,' I replied,
'I would not kneel to a usurper; the Esmond that would have served your
Majesty will never be groom to a traitor's posset.' The royal exile
smiled, even in the midst of his misfortune; he deigned to raise me with
words of consolation. The viscount, my husband, himself, could not be
angry at the august salute with which he honoured me!"

The public misfortune had the effect of making my lord and his lady better
friends than they ever had been since their courtship. My lord viscount
had shown both loyalty and spirit, when these were rare qualities in the
dispirited party about the king; and the praise he got elevated him not a
little in his wife's good opinion, and perhaps in his own. He wakened up
from the listless and supine life which he had been leading; was always
riding to and fro in consultation with this friend or that of the king's;
the page of course knowing little of his doings, but remarking only his
greater cheerfulness and altered d