in trying, and not being able to love you.  But if you had asked me when we gave you the sword, you might have had me, sir, and we both should have been miserable by this time.  I talked with that silly lord all night just to vex you and mamma, and I succeeded, didn’t I?  How frankly we can talk of these things!  It seems a thousand years ago:  and, though we are here sitting in the same room, there is a great wall between us.  My dear, kind, faithful, gloomy old cousin!  I can like now, and admire you too, sir, and say that you are brave, and very kind, and very true, and a fine gentleman for all—­for all your little mishap at your birth,” says she, wagging her arch head.

“And now, sir,” says she, with a curtsy, “we must have no more talk except when mamma is by, as his Grace is with us; for he does not half like you, cousin, and is jealous as the black man in your favorite play.”

Though the very kindness of the words stabbed Mr. Esmond with the keenest pang, he did not show his sense of the wound by any look of his (as Beatrix, indeed, afterwards owned to him), but said, with a perfect command of himself and an easy smile, “The interview must not end yet, my dear, until I have had my last word.  Stay, here comes your mother” (indeed she came in here with her sweet anxious face, and Esmond going up kissed her hand respectfully).  “My dear lady may hear, too, the last words, which are no secrets, and are only a parting benediction accompanying a present for your marriage from an old gentleman your guardian; for I feel as if I was the guardian of all the family, and an old old fellow that is fit to be the grandfather of you all; and in this character let me make my Lady Duchess her wedding present.  They are the diamonds my father’s widow left me.  I had thought Beatrix might have had them a year ago; but they are good enough for a duchess, though not bright enough for the handsomest woman in the world.”  And he took the case out of his pocket in which the jewels were, and presented them to his cousin.

She gave a cry of delight, for the stones were indeed very handsome, and of great value; and the next minute the necklace was where Belinda’s cross is in Mr. Pope’s admirable poem, and glittering on the whitest and most perfectly-shaped neck in all England.

The girl’s delight at receiving these trinkets was so great, that after rushing to the looking-glass and examining the effect they produced upon that fair neck which they surrounded, Beatrix was running back with her arms extended, and was perhaps for paying her cousin with a price, that he would have liked no doubt to receive from those beautiful rosy lips of hers, but at this moment the door opened, and his Grace the bridegroom elect was announced.

He looked very black upon Mr. Esmond, to whom he made a very low bow indeed, and kissed the hand of each lady in his most ceremonious manner.  He had come in his chair from the palace hard by, and wore his two stars of the Garter and the Thistle.