A pretty sight it was to see, during my lord’s absence, or on those many mornings when sleep or headache kept him a-bed, this fair young lady of Castlewood, her little daughter at her knee, and her domestics gathered round her, reading the Morning Prayer of the English Church.  Esmond long remembered how she looked and spoke, kneeling reverently before the sacred book, the sun shining upon her golden hair until it made a halo round about her.  A dozen of the servants of the house kneeled in a line opposite their mistress; for a while Harry Esmond kept apart from these mysteries, but Doctor Tusher showing him that the prayers read were those of the Church of all ages, and the boy’s own inclination prompting him to be always as near as he might to his mistress, and to think all things she did right, from listening to the prayers in the ante-chamber, he came presently to kneel down with the rest of the household in the parlor; and before a couple of years my lady had made a thorough convert.  Indeed, the boy loved his catechiser so much that he would have subscribed to anything she bade him, and was never tired of listening to her fond discourse and simple comments upon the book, which she read to him in a voice of which it was difficult to resist the sweet persuasion and tender appealing kindness.  This friendly controversy, and the intimacy which it occasioned, bound the lad more fondly than ever to his mistress.  The happiest period of all his life was this; and the young mother, with her daughter and son, and the orphan lad whom she protected, read and worked and played, and were children together.  If the lady looked forward—­as what fond woman does not?—­towards the future, she had no plans from which Harry Esmond was left out; and a thousand and a thousand times, in his passionate and impetuous way, he vowed that no power should separate him from his mistress; and only asked for some chance to happen by which he might show his fidelity to her.  Now, at the close of his life, as he sits and recalls in tranquillity the happy and busy scenes of it, he can think, not ungratefully, that he has been faithful to that early vow.  Such a life is so simple that years may be chronicled in a few lines.  But few men’s life-voyages are destined to be all prosperous; and this calm of which we are speaking was soon to come to an end.

As Esmond grew, and observed for himself, he found of necessity much to read and think of outside that fond circle of kinsfolk who had admitted him to join hand with them.  He read more books than they cared to study with him; was alone in the midst of them many a time, and passed nights over labors, futile perhaps, but in which they could not join him.  His dear mistress divined his thoughts with her usual jealous watchfulness of affection:  began to forebode a time when he would escape from his home-nest; and, at his eager protestations to the contrary, would only sigh and shake her head.  Before those fatal decrees in life are executed, there are always secret previsions and warning omens.  When everything yet seems calm, we are aware that the storm is coming.  Ere the happy days were over, two at least of that home-party felt that they were drawing to a close; and were uneasy, and on the look-out for the cloud which was to obscure their calm.