“Mon ami,” she says quite kindly, and taking Esmond’s hand, with an air of great compassion, “you can’t think that in our position anything more than our present friendship is possible.  You are our elder brother—­as such we view you, pitying your misfortune, not rebuking you with it.  Why, you are old enough and grave enough to be our father.  I always thought you a hundred years old, Harry, with your solemn face and grave air.  I feel as a sister to you, and can no more.  Isn’t that enough, sir?” And she put her face quite close to his—­who knows with what intention?

“It’s too much,” says Esmond, turning away.  “I can’t bear this life, and shall leave it.  I shall stay, I think, to see you married, and then freight a ship, and call it the ‘Beatrix,’ and bid you all . . .”

Here the servant, flinging the door open, announced his Grace the Duke of Hamilton, and Esmond started back with something like an imprecation on his lips, as the nobleman entered, looking splendid in his star and green ribbon.  He gave Mr. Esmond just that gracious bow which he would have given to a lackey who fetched him a chair or took his hat, and seated himself by Miss Beatrix, as the poor Colonel went out of the room with a hang-dog look.

Esmond’s mistress was in the lower room as he passed down stairs.  She often met him as he was coming away from Beatrix; and she beckoned him into the apartment.

“Has she told you, Harry?” Lady Castlewood said.

“She has been very frank—­very,” says Esmond.

“But—­but about what is going to happen?”

“What is going to happen?” says he, his heart beating.

“His Grace the Duke of Hamilton has proposed to her,” says my lady.  “He made his offer yesterday.  They will marry as soon as his mourning is over; and you have heard his Grace is appointed Ambassador to Paris; and the Ambassadress goes with him.”

CHAPTER IV.

Beatrix’s new suitor.

The gentleman whom Beatrix had selected was, to be sure, twenty years older than the Colonel, with whom she quarrelled for being too old; but this one was but a nameless adventurer, and the other the greatest duke in Scotland, with pretensions even to a still higher title.  My Lord Duke of Hamilton had, indeed, every merit belonging to a gentleman, and he had had the time to mature his accomplishments fully, being upwards of fifty years old when Madam Beatrix selected him for a bridegroom.  Duke Hamilton, then Earl of Arran, had been educated at the famous Scottish university of Glasgow, and, coming to London, became a great favorite of Charles the Second, who made him a lord of his bedchamber, and afterwards appointed him ambassador to the French king, under whom the Earl served two campaigns as his Majesty’s aide-de-camp; and he was absent on this service when King Charles died.

King James continued my lord’s promotion—­made him Master of the Wardrobe and Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Horse; and his lordship adhered firmly to King James, being of the small company that never quitted that unfortunate monarch till his departure out of England; and then it was, in 1688 namely, that he made the friendship with Colonel Francis Esmond, that had always been, more or less, maintained in the two families.