“Farewell.  Farewell, brother.”  She gave him her cheek as a brotherly privilege.  The cheek was as cold as marble.

Esmond’s mistress showed no signs of jealousy when he returned to the room where she was.  She had schooled herself so as to look quite inscrutably, when she had a mind.  Amongst her other feminine qualities she had that of being a perfect dissembler.

He rode away from Castlewood to attempt the task he was bound on, and stand or fall by it; in truth his state of mind was such, that he was eager for some outward excitement to counteract that gnawing malady which he was inwardly enduring.

CHAPTER VIII.

I travel to France and bring home A portrait of Rigaud.

Mr. Esmond did not think fit to take leave at Court, or to inform all the world of Pall Mall and the coffee-houses, that he was about to quit England; and chose to depart in the most private manner possible.  He procured a pass as for a Frenchman, through Dr. Atterbury, who did that business for him, getting the signature even from Lord Bolingbroke’s office, without any personal application to the Secretary.  Lockwood, his faithful servant, he took with him to Castlewood, and left behind there:  giving out ere he left London that he himself was sick, and gone to Hampshire for country air, and so departed as silently as might be upon his business.

As Frank Castlewood’s aid was indispensable for Mr. Esmond’s scheme, his first visit was to Bruxelles (passing by way of Antwerp, where the Duke of Marlborough was in exile), and in the first-named place Harry found his dear young Benedict, the married man, who appeared to be rather out of humor with his matrimonial chain, and clogged with the obstinate embraces which Clotilda kept round his neck.  Colonel Esmond was not presented to her; but Monsieur Simon was, a gentleman of the Royal Cravat (Esmond bethought him of the regiment of his honest Irishman, whom he had seen that day after Malplaquet, when he first set eyes on the young King); and Monsieur Simon was introduced to the Viscountess Castlewood, nee Comptesse Wertheim; to the numerous counts, the Lady Clotilda’s tall brothers; to her father the chamberlain; and to the lady his wife, Frank’s mother-in-law, a tall and majestic person of large proportions, such as became the mother of such a company of grenadiers as her warlike sons formed.  The whole race were at free quarters in the little castle nigh to Bruxelles which Frank had taken; rode his horses; drank his wine; and lived easily at the poor lad’s charges.  Mr. Esmond had always maintained a perfect fluency in the French, which was his mother tongue; and if this family (that spoke French with the twang which the Flemings use) discovered any inaccuracy in Mr. Simon’s pronunciation, ’twas to be attributed to the latter’s long residence in England, where