the post had brought him letters from London, in a careless tone,
that the Lord Mohun was gone to Paris, and was about to make a great
journey in Europe; and though Lord Castlewood's own gloom did not wear
off, or his behaviour alter, yet this cause of anxiety being removed from
his lady's mind, she began to be more hopeful and easy in her spirits:
striving too, with all her heart, and by all the means of soothing in her
power, to call back my lord's cheerfulness and dissipate his moody humour.

He accounted for it himself, by saying that he was out of health; that he
wanted to see his physician; that he would go to London, and consult
Doctor Cheyne. It was agreed that his lordship and Harry Esmond should
make the journey as far as London together; and of a Monday morning, the
10th of October, in the year 1700, they set forwards towards London on
horseback. The day before being Sunday, and the rain pouring down, the
family did not visit church; and at night my lord read the service to his
family, very finely, and with a peculiar sweetness and gravity--speaking
the parting benediction, Harry thought, as solemn as ever he heard it. And
he kissed and embraced his wife and children before they went to their own
chambers with more fondness than he was ordinarily wont to show, and with
a solemnity and feeling of which they thought in after days with no small
comfort.

They took horse the next morning (after adieux from the family as tender
as on the night previous), lay that night on the road, and entered London
at nightfall; my lord going to the "Trumpet", in the Cockpit, Whitehall, a
house used by the military in his time as a young man, and accustomed by
his lordship ever since.

An hour after my lord's arrival (which showed that his visit had been
arranged beforehand), my lord's man of business arrived from Gray's Inn;
and thinking that his patron might wish to be private with the lawyer,
Esmond was for leaving them: but my lord said his business was short;
introduced Mr. Esmond particularly to the lawyer, who had been engaged for
the family in the old lord's time; who said that he had paid the money, as
desired that day, to my Lord Mohun himself, at his lodgings in Bow Street;
that his lordship had expressed some surprise, as it was not customary to
employ lawyers, he said, in such transactions between men of honour; but,
nevertheless, he had returned my lord viscount's note of hand, which he
held at his client's dispo