His cousin was now of more than middle age, and had nobody’s word but her own for the beauty which she said she once possessed.  She was lean, and yellow, and long in the tooth; all the red and white in all the toy-shops in London could not make a beauty of her—­Mr. Killigrew called her the Sybil, the death’s-head put up at the King’s feast as a memento mori, &c.—­in fine, a woman who might be easy of conquest, but whom only a very bold man would think of conquering.  This bold man was Thomas Esmond.  He had a fancy to my Lord Castlewood’s savings, the amount of which rumor had very much exaggerated.  Madame Isabel was said to have Royal jewels of great value; whereas poor Tom Esmond’s last coat but one was in pawn.

My lord had at this time a fine house in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, nigh to the Duke’s Theatre and the Portugal ambassador’s chapel.  Tom Esmond, who had frequented the one as long as he had money to spend among the actresses, now came to the church as assiduously.  He looked so lean and shabby, that he passed without difficulty for a repentant sinner; and so, becoming converted, you may be sure took his uncle’s priest for a director.

This charitable father reconciled him with the old lord, his uncle, who a short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my lord’s coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard—­to his twopenny ordinary in Bell Yard.

Thomas Esmond, after this reconciliation with his uncle, very soon began to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good living and clean linen.  He fasted rigorously twice a week, to be sure; but he made amends on the other days:  and, to show how great his appetite was, Mr. Wycherley said, he ended by swallowing that fly-blown rank old morsel his cousin.  There were endless jokes and lampoons about this marriage at Court:  but Tom rode thither in his uncle’s coach now, called him father, and having won could afford to laugh.  This marriage took place very shortly before King Charles died:  whom the Viscount of Castlewood speedily followed.

The issue of this marriage was one son, whom the parents watched with an intense eagerness and care; but who, in spite of nurses and physicians, had only a brief existence.  His tainted blood did not run very long in his poor feeble little body.  Symptoms of evil broke out early on him; and, part from flattery, part superstition, nothing would satisfy my lord and lady, especially the latter, but having the poor little cripple touched by his Majesty at his church.  They were ready to cry out miracle at first (the doctors and quack-salvers being constantly in attendance on the child, and experimenting on his poor little body with every conceivable nostrum) but though there seemed, from some reason, a notable amelioration in the infant’s health after his Majesty touched him, in a few weeks afterward the poor thing died—­causing the lampooners of the Court to say, that the King, in expelling evil out of the infant of Tom Esmond and Isabella his wife, expelled the life out of it, which was nothing but corruption.