“Should you like the Duke for a cousin?” says Mr. Secretary St. John, whispering to Colonel Esmond in French; “it appears that the widower consoles himself.”

But to return to our little Spectator paper and the conversation which grew out of it.  Miss Beatrix at first was quite bit (as the phrase of that day was) and did not “smoke” the authorship of the story; indeed Esmond had tried to imitate as well as he could Mr. Steele’s manner (as for the other author of the Spectator, his prose style I think is altogether inimitable); and Dick, who was the idlest and best-natured of men, would have let the piece pass into his journal and go to posterity as one of his own lucubrations, but that Esmond did not care to have a lady’s name whom he loved sent forth to the world in a light so unfavorable.  Beatrix pished and psha’d over the paper; Colonel Esmond watching with no little interest her countenance as she read it.

“How stupid your friend Mr. Steele becomes!” cries Miss Beatrix.  “Epsom and Tunbridge!  Will he never have done with Epsom and Tunbridge, and with beaux at church, and Jocastas and Lindamiras?  Why does he not call women Nelly and Betty, as their godfathers and godmothers did for them in their baptism?”

“Beatrix.  Beatrix!” says her mother, “speak gravely of grave things.”

“Mamma thinks the Church Catechism came from heaven, I believe,” says Beatrix, with a laugh, “and was brought down by a bishop from a mountain.  Oh, how I used to break my heart over it!  Besides, I had a Popish godmother, mamma; why did you give me one?”

“I gave you the Queen’s name,” says her mother blushing.  “And a very pretty name it is,” said somebody else.

Beatrix went on reading—­“Spell my name with a Y—­why, you wretch,” says she, turning round to Colonel Esmond, “you have been telling my story to Mr. Steele—­or stop—­you have written the paper yourself to turn me into ridicule.  For shame, sir!”

Poor Mr. Esmond felt rather frightened, and told a truth, which was nevertheless an entire falsehood.  “Upon my honor,” says he, “I have not even read the Spectator of this morning.”  Nor had he, for that was not the Spectator, but a sham newspaper put in its place.

She went on reading:  her face rather flushed as she read.  “No,” she says, “I think you couldn’t have written it.  I think it must have been Mr. Steele when he was drunk—­and afraid of his horrid vulgar wife.  Whenever I see an enormous compliment to a woman, and some outrageous panegyric about female virtue, I always feel sure that the Captain and his better half have fallen out over-night, and that he has been brought home tipsy, or has been found out in—­”

“Beatrix!” cries the Lady Castlewood.