“For shame!” burst out Beatrix, in a passion of tears and mortification.  “You disgrace me by your cruel precautions; my own mother is the first to suspect me, and would take me away as my gaoler.  I will not go with you, mother; I will go as no one’s prisoner.  If I wanted to deceive, do you think I could find no means of evading you?  My family suspects me.  As those mistrust me that ought to love me most, let me leave them; I will go, but I will go alone:  to Castlewood, be it.  I have been unhappy there and lonely enough; let me go back, but spare me at least the humiliation of setting a watch over my misery, which is a trial I can’t bear.  Let me go when you will, but alone, or not at all.  You three can stay and triumph over my unhappiness, and I will bear it as I have borne it before.  Let my gaoler-in-chief go order the coach that is to take me away.  I thank you, Henry Esmond, for your share in the conspiracy.  All my life long I’ll thank you, and remember you, and you, brother, and you, mother, how shall I show my gratitude to you for your careful defence of my honor?”

She swept out of the room with the air of an empress, flinging glances of defiance at us all, and leaving us conquerors of the field, but scared, and almost ashamed of our victory.  It did indeed seem hard and cruel that we three should have conspired the banishment and humiliation of that fair creature.  We looked at each other in silence:  ’twas not the first stroke by many of our actions in that unlucky time, which, being done, we wished undone.  We agreed it was best she should go alone, speaking stealthily to one another, and under our breaths, like persons engaged in an act they felt ashamed in doing.

In a half-hour, it might be, after our talk she came back, her countenance wearing the same defiant air which it had borne when she left us.  She held a shagreen-case in her hand; Esmond knew it as containing his diamonds which he had given to her for her marriage with Duke Hamilton, and which she had worn so splendidly on the inauspicious night of the Prince’s arrival.  “I have brought back,” says she, “to the Marquis of Esmond the present he deigned to make me in days when he trusted me better than now.  I will never accept a benefit or a kindness from Henry Esmond more, and I give back these family diamonds, which belonged to one king’s mistress, to the gentleman that suspected I would be another.  Have you been upon your message of coach-caller, my Lord Marquis?  Will you send your valet to see that I do not run away?” We were right, yet, by her manner, she had put us all in the wrong; we were conquerors, yet the honors of the day seemed to be with the poor oppressed girl.

That luckless box containing the stones had first been ornamented with a baron’s coronet, when Beatrix was engaged to the young gentleman from whom she parted, and afterwards the gilt crown of a duchess figured on the cover, which also poor Beatrix was destined never to wear.  Lady Castlewood opened the case mechanically and scarce thinking what she did; and behold, besides the diamonds, Esmond’s present, there lay in the box the enamelled miniature of the late Duke, which Beatrix had laid aside with her mourning when the King came into the house; and which the poor heedless thing very likely had forgotten.