“I drink to the greatest general with all my heart,” says Mr. Webb; “there can be no gainsaying that character of him.  My glass goes to the General, and not to the Duke, Mr. Steele.”  And the stout old gentleman emptied his bumper; to which Dick replied by filling and emptying a pair of brimmers, one for the General and one for the Duke.

And now his Grace of Hamilton, rising up with flashing eyes (we had all been drinking pretty freely), proposed a toast to the lovely, to the incomparable Mrs. Beatrix Esmond; we all drank it with cheers, and my Lord Ashburnham especially, with a shout of enthusiasm.

“What a pity there is a Duchess of Hamilton,” whispers St. John, who drank more wine and yet was more steady than most of the others, and we entered the drawing-room where the ladies were at their tea.  As for poor Dick, we were obliged to leave him alone at the dining-table, where he was hiccupping out the lines from the “Campaign,” in which the greatest poet had celebrated the greatest general in the world; and Harry Esmond found him, half an hour afterwards, in a more advanced stage of liquor, and weeping about the treachery of Tom Boxer.

The drawing-room was all dark to poor Harry, in spite of the grand illumination.  Beatrix scarce spoke to him.  When my Lord Duke went away, she practised upon the next in rank, and plied my young Lord Ashburnham with all the fire of her eyes and the fascinations of her wit.  Most of the party were set to cards, and Mr. St. John, after yawning in the face of Mrs. Steele, whom he did not care to pursue any more; and talking in his most brilliant animated way to Lady Castlewood, whom he pronounced to be beautiful, of a far higher order of beauty than her daughter, presently took his leave, and went his way.  The rest of the company speedily followed, my Lord Ashburnham the last, throwing fiery glances at the smiling young temptress, who had bewitched more hearts than his in her thrall.

No doubt, as a kinsman of the house, Mr. Esmond thought fit to be the last of all in it; he remained after the coaches had rolled away—­after his dowager aunt’s chair and flambeaux had marched off in the darkness towards Chelsey, and the town’s people had gone to bed, who had been drawn into the square to gape at the unusual assemblage of chairs and chariots, lackeys, and torchmen.  The poor mean wretch lingered yet for a few minutes, to see whether the girl would vouchsafe him a smile, or a parting word of consolation.  But her enthusiasm of the morning was quite died out, or she chose to be in a different mood.  She fell to joking about the dowdy appearance of Lady Betty, and mimicked the vulgarity of Mrs. Steele; and then she put up her little hand to her mouth and yawned, lighted a taper, and shrugged her shoulders, and dropping Mr. Esmond a saucy curtsy, sailed off to bed.

“The day began so well, Henry, that I hoped it might have ended better,” was all the consolation that poor Esmond’s fond mistress could give him; and as he trudged home through the dark alone, he thought with bitter rage in his heart, and a feeling of almost revolt against the sacrifice he had made:—­“She would have me,” thought he, “had I but a name to give her.  But for my promise to her father, I might have my rank and my mistress too.”