“The lady shook her head,” continued my kind scholar. “’The hearts of young men, Mr. Steele, are not so made,’ she said.  ’Mr. Esmond will find other—­other friends.  The mistress of this house has relented very much towards the late lord’s son,’ she added, with a blush, ’and has promised me, that is, has promised that she will care for his fortune.  Whilst I live in it, after the horrid horrid deed which has passed, Castlewood must never be a home to him—­never.  Nor would I have him write to me—­except—­no—­I would have him never write to me, nor see him more.  Give him, if you will, my parting—­Hush! not a word of this before my daughter.’

“Here the fair Beatrix entered from the river, with her cheeks flushing with health, and looking only the more lovely and fresh for the mourning habiliments which she wore.  And my Lady Viscountess said—­

“’Beatrix, this is Mr. Steele, gentleman-usher to the Prince’s Highness.  When does your new comedy appear, Mr. Steele?’ I hope thou wilt be out of prison for the first night, Harry.”

The sentimental Captain concluded his sad tale, saying, “Faith, the beauty of Filia pulcrior drove pulcram matrem out of my head; and yet as I came down the river, and thought about the pair, the pallid dignity and exquisite grace of the matron had the uppermost, and I thought her even more noble than the virgin!”

The party of prisoners lived very well in Newgate, and with comforts very different to those which were awarded to the poor wretches there (his insensibility to their misery, their gayety still more frightful, their curses and blasphemy, hath struck with a kind of shame since—­as proving how selfish, during his imprisonment, his own particular grief was, and how entirely the thoughts of it absorbed him):  if the three gentlemen lived well under the care of the Warden of Newgate, it was because they paid well:  and indeed the cost at the dearest ordinary or the grandest tavern in London could not have furnished a longer reckoning, than our host of the “Handcuff Inn”—­as Colonel Westbury called it.  Our rooms were the three in the gate over Newgate—­on the second story looking up Newgate Street towards Cheapside and Paul’s Church.  And we had leave to walk on the roof, and could see thence Smithfield and the Bluecoat Boys’ School, Gardens, and the Chartreux, where, as Harry Esmond remembered, Dick the Scholar, and his friend Tom Tusher, had had their schooling.

Harry could never have paid his share of that prodigious heavy reckoning which my landlord brought to his guests once a week:  for he had but three pieces in his pockets that fatal night before the duel, when the gentlemen were at cards, and offered to play five.  But whilst he was yet ill at the Gatehouse, after Lady Castlewood had visited him there, and before his trial, there came one in an orange-tawny coat and blue lace, the livery which the Esmonds always wore, and brought a sealed packet for Mr. Esmond, which contained twenty guineas, and a note saying that a counsel had been appointed for him, and that more money would be forthcoming whenever he needed it.