The Lady Castlewood’s mind was greatly relieved in the last few days of this well-remembered holiday time, by my lord’s announcing one morning, after 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 behavior 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 humor.

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 11th 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 honor; but nevertheless, he had returned my Lord Viscount’s note of hand, which he held at his client’s disposition.

“I thought the Lord Mohun had been in Paris!” cried Mr. Esmond, in great alarm and astonishment.

“He is come back at my invitation,” said my Lord Viscount.  “We have accounts to settle together.”

“I pray heaven they are over, sir,” says Esmond.

“Oh, quite,” replied the other, looking hard at the young man.  “He was rather troublesome about that money which I told you I had lost to him at play.  And now ’tis paid, and we are quits on that score, and we shall meet good friends again.”