posite
their mistress; for awhile Harry Esmond kept apart from these mysteries,
but Doctor Tusher showing him that the prayers read were those of the
Church of all ages, and the boy's own inclination prompting him to be
always as near as he might to his mistress, and to think all things she
did right, from listening to the prayers in the antechamber, he came
presently to kneel down with the rest of the household in the parlour; and
before a couple of years my lady had made a thorough convert. Indeed, the
boy loved his catechizer so much that he would have subscribed to anything
she bade him, and was never tired of listening to her fond discourse and
simple comments upon the book, which she read to him in a voice of which
it was difficult to resist the sweet persuasion and tender appealing
kindness. This friendly controversy, and the intimacy which it occasioned,
bound the lad more fondly than ever to his mistress. The happiest period
of all his life was this; and the young mother, with her daughter and son,
and the orphan lad whom she protected, read and worked and played, and
were children together. If the lady looked forward--as what fond woman does
not?--towards the future, she had no plans from which Harry Esmond was left
out; and a thousand and a thousand times in his passionate and impetuous
way he vowed that no power should separate him from his mistress, and only
asked for some chance to happen by which he might show his fidelity to
her. Now, at the close of his life, as he sits and recalls in tranquillity
the happy and busy scenes of it, he can think, not ungratefully, that he
has been faithful to that early vow. Such a life is so simple that years
may be chronicled in a few lines. But few men's life-voyages are destined
to be all prosperous; and this calm of which we are speaking was soon to
come to an end.

As Esmond grew, and observed for himself, he found of necessity much to
read and think of outside that fond circle of kinsfolk who had admitted
him to join hand with them. He read more books than they cared to study
with him; was alone in the midst of them many a time, and passed nights
over labours, futile perhaps, but in which they could not join him. His
dear mistress divined his thoughts with her usual jealous watchfulness of
affection: began to forebode a time when he would escape from his
home-nest; and, at his eager protestations to the contrary, would only
sigh and shake her head. Before those fatal