“And I put on my best stockings to captivate you, I remember, sir . . .”

“You have had my heart ever since then, such as it was; and such as you were, I cared for no other woman.  What little reputation I have won, it was that you might be pleased with it:  and indeed, it is not much; and I think a hundred fools in the army have got and deserved quite as much.  Was there something in the air of that dismal old Castlewood that made us all gloomy, and dissatisfied, and lonely under its ruined old roof?  We were all so, even when together and united, as it seemed, following our separate schemes, each as we sat round the table.”

“Dear, dreary old place!” cries Beatrix.  “Mamma hath never had the heart to go back thither since we left it, when—­never mind how many years ago.”  And she flung back her curls, and looked over her fair shoulder at the mirror superbly, as if she said, “Time, I defy you.”

“Yes,” says Esmond, who had the art, as she owned, of divining many of her thoughts.  “You can afford to look in the glass still; and only be pleased by the truth it tells you.  As for me, do you know what my scheme is?  I think of asking Frank to give me the Virginian estate King Charles gave our grandfather. (She gave a superb curtsy, as much as to say, ‘Our grandfather, indeed!  Thank you, Mr. Bastard.’) Yes, I know you are thinking of my bar-sinister, and so am I. A man cannot get over it in this country; unless, indeed, he wears it across a king’s arms, when ’tis a highly honorable coat; and I am thinking of retiring into the plantations, and building myself a wigwam in the woods, and perhaps, if I want company, suiting myself with a squaw.  We will send your ladyship furs over for the winter; and, when you are old, we’ll provide you with tobacco.  I am not quite clever enough, or not rogue enough—­I know not which—­for the Old World.  I may make a place for myself in the New, which is not so full; and found a family there.  When you are a mother yourself, and a great lady, perhaps I shall send you over from the plantation some day a little barbarian that is half Esmond half Mohock, and you will be kind to him for his father’s sake, who was, after all, your kinsman; and whom you loved a little.”

“What folly you are talking, Harry,” says Miss Beatrix, looking with her great eyes.

“’Tis sober earnest,” says Esmond.  And, indeed, the scheme had been dwelling a good deal in his mind for some time past, and especially since his return home, when he found how hopeless, and even degrading to himself, his passion was.  “No,” says he, then:  “I have tried half a dozen times now.  I can bear being away from you well enough; but being with you is intolerable” (another low curtsy on Mistress Beatrix’s part), “and I will go.  I have enough to buy axes and guns for my men, and beads and blankets for the savages; and I’ll go and live amongst them.”