“And can my dearest lady doubt what that will be?” says the Colonel.

“It rests with you, Harry, as the head of our house.”

“It was settled twelve years since, by my dear lord’s bedside,” says Colonel Esmond.  “The children must know nothing of this.  Frank and his heirs after him must bear our name.  ’Tis his rightfully; I have not even a proof of that marriage of my father and mother, though my poor lord, on his death-bed, told me that Father Holt had brought such a proof to Castlewood.  I would not seek it when I was abroad.  I went and looked at my poor mother’s grave in her convent.  What matter to her now?  No court of law on earth, upon my mere word, would deprive my Lord Viscount and set me up.  I am the head of the house, dear lady; but Frank is Viscount of Castlewood still.  And rather than disturb him, I would turn monk, or disappear in America.”

As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been willing to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond creature flung herself down on her knees before him, and kissed both his hands in an outbreak of passionate love and gratitude, such as could not but melt his heart, and make him feel very proud and thankful that God had given him the power to show his love for her, and to prove it by some little sacrifice on his own part.  To be able to bestow benefits or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred upon a man—­and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or vanity, could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to confer some kindness upon his best and dearest friends?

“Dearest saint,” says he—­“purest soul, that has had so much to suffer, that has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love.  ’Tis for me to kneel, not for you:  ’tis for me to be thankful that I can make you happy.  Hath my life any other aim?  Blessed be God that I can serve you!  What pleasure, think you, could all the world give me compared to that?”

“Don’t raise me,” she said, in a wild way, to Esmond, who would have lifted her.  “Let me kneel—­let me kneel, and—­and—­worship you.”

Before such a partial judge as Esmond’s dear mistress owned herself to be, any cause which he might plead was sure to be given in his favor; and accordingly he found little difficulty in reconciling her to the news whereof he was bearer, of her son’s marriage to a foreign lady, Papist though she was.  Lady Castlewood never could be brought to think so ill of that religion as other people in England thought of it:  she held that ours was undoubtedly a branch of the Catholic church, but that the Roman was one of the main stems on which, no doubt, many errors had been grafted (she was, for a woman, extraordinarily well versed in this controversy, having acted, as a girl, as secretary to her father, the late dean, and written many of his sermons, under his dictation); and if Frank had chosen to marry a lady of the church