d came back from London wofully poorer each
time than he went, as the state of his affairs testified, when the sudden
accident came by which his career was brought to an end.

He was fond of the parade of dress, and passed as many hours daily at his
toilette as an elderly coquette. A tenth part of his day was spent in the
brushing of his teeth and the oiling of his hair, which was curling and
brown, and which he did not like to conceal under a periwig, such as
almost everybody of that time wore (we have the liberty of our hair back
now, but powder and pomatum along with it. When, I wonder, will these
monstrous poll-taxes of our age be withdrawn, and men allowed to carry
their colours, black, red, or grey, as nature made them?) And, as he liked
her to be well dressed, his lady spared no pains in that matter to please
him; indeed, she would dress her head or cut it off if he had bidden her.

It was a wonder to young Esmond, serving as page to my lord and lady, to
hear, day after day, to such company as came, the same boisterous stories
told by my lord, at which his lady never failed to smile or hold down her
head, and Doctor Tusher to burst out laughing at the proper point, or cry,
"Fie, my lord, remember my cloth," but with such a faint show of
resistance, that it only provoked my lord further. Lord Castlewood's
stories rose by degrees, and became stronger after the ale at dinner and
the bottle afterwards; my lady always taking flight after the very first
glass to Church and King, and leaving the gentlemen to drink the rest of
the toasts by themselves.

And, as Harry Esmond was her page, he also was called from duty at this
time. "My lord has lived in the army and with soldiers," she would say to
the lad, "amongst whom great licence is allowed. You have had a different
nurture, and I trust these things will change as you grow older; not that
any fault attaches to my lord, who is one of the best and most religious
men in this kingdom." And very likely she believed so. 'Tis strange what a
man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

And as Esmond has taken truth for his motto, it must be owned, even with
regard to that other angel, his mistress, that she had a fault of
character, which flawed her perfections. With the other sex perfectly
tolerant and kindly, of her own she was invariably jealous, and a proof
that she had this vice is, that though she would acknowledge a thousand
faults that she had not, to this which