Esmond was thankful for his old friend’s good opinion, however little he might share the Jesuit-father’s enthusiasm.  “I have thought of that question, too,” says he, “dear Father,” and he took the other’s hand—­“thought it out for myself, as all men must, and contrive to do the right, and trust to heaven as devoutly in my way as you in yours.  Another six months of you as a child, and I had desired no better.  I used to weep upon my pillow at Castlewood as I thought of you, and I might have been a brother of your order; and who knows,” Esmond added, with a smile, “a priest in full orders, and with a pair of mustachios, and a Bavarian uniform?”

“My son,” says Father Holt, turning red, “in the cause of religion and loyalty all disguises are fair.”

“Yes,” broke in Esmond, “all disguises are fair, you say; and all uniforms, say I, black or red,—­a black cockade or a white one—­or a laced hat, or a sombrero, with a tonsure under it.  I cannot believe that St. Francis Xavier sailed over the sea in a cloak, or raised the dead—­I tried, and very nearly did once, but cannot.  Suffer me to do the right, and to hope for the best in my own way.”

Esmond wished to cut short the good Father’s theology, and succeeded; and the other, sighing over his pupil’s invincible ignorance, did not withdraw his affection from him, but gave him his utmost confidence—­as much, that is to say, as a priest can give:  more than most do; for he was naturally garrulous, and too eager to speak.

Holt’s friendship encouraged Captain Esmond to ask, what he long wished to know, and none could tell him, some history of the poor mother whom he had often imagined in his dreams, and whom he never knew.  He described to Holt those circumstances which are already put down in the first part of this story—­the promise he had made to his dear lord, and that dying friend’s confession; and he besought Mr. Holt to tell him what he knew regarding the poor woman from whom he had been taken.

“She was of this very town,” Holt said, and took Esmond to see the street where her father lived, and where, as he believed, she was born.  “In 1676, when your father came hither in the retinue of the late king, then Duke of York, and banished hither in disgrace, Captain Thomas Esmond became acquainted with your mother, pursued her, and made a victim of her; he hath told me in many subsequent conversations, which I felt bound to keep private then, that she was a woman of great virtue and tenderness, and in all respects a most fond, faithful creature.  He called himself Captain Thomas, having good reason to be ashamed of his conduct towards her, and hath spoken to me many times with sincere remorse for that, as with fond love for her many amiable qualities, he owned to having treated her very ill:  and that at this time his life was one of profligacy, gambling, and poverty.  She became with child of you; was cursed by her own parents at that discovery; though she never upbraided, except by her involuntary tears, and the misery depicted on her countenance, the author of her wretchedness and ruin.