For once her mother took little heed of her sobbing, and continued to speak eagerly—­“My lord,” she said, “this young man—­your dependant—­told me just now in French—­he was ashamed to speak in his own language—­that he had been at the ale-house all day, where he has had that little wretch who is now ill of the small-pox on his knee.  And he comes home reeking from that place—­yes, reeking from it—­and takes my boy into his lap without shame, and sits down by me, yes, by me.  He may have killed Frank for what I know—­killed our child.  Why was he brought in to disgrace our house?  Why is he here?  Let him go—­let him go, I say, to-night, and pollute the place no more.”

She had never once uttered a syllable of unkindness to Harry Esmond; and her cruel words smote the poor boy, so that he stood for some moments bewildered with grief and rage at the injustice of such a stab from such a hand.  He turned quite white from red, which he had been.

“I cannot help my birth, madam,” he said, “nor my other misfortune.  And as for your boy, if—­if my coming nigh to him pollutes him now, it was not so always.  Good-night, my lord.  Heaven bless you and yours for your goodness to me.  I have tired her ladyship’s kindness out, and I will go;” and, sinking down on his knee, Harry Esmond took the rough hand of his benefactor and kissed it.

“He wants to go to the ale-house—­let him go,” cried my lady.

“I’m d—­d if he shall,” said my lord.  “I didn’t think you could be so d—­d ungrateful, Rachel.”

Her reply was to burst into a flood of tears, and to quit the room with a rapid glance at Harry Esmond,—­as my lord, not heeding them, and still in great good-humor, raised up his young client from his kneeling posture (for a thousand kindnesses had caused the lad to revere my lord as a father), and put his broad hand on Harry Esmond’s shoulder.

“She was always so,” my lord said; “the very notion of a woman drives her mad.  I took to liquor on that very account, by Jove, for no other reason than that; for she can’t be jealous of a beer-barrel or a bottle of rum, can she, Doctor?  D—–­ it, look at the maids—­just look at the maids in the house” (my lord pronounced all the words together—­just-look-at-the-maze-in-the-house:  jever-see-such-maze?) “You wouldn’t take a wife out of Castlewood now, would you, Doctor?” and my lord burst out laughing.

The Doctor, who had been looking at my Lord Castlewood from under his eyelids, said, “But joking apart, and, my lord, as a divine, I cannot treat the subject in a jocular light, nor, as a pastor of this congregation, look with anything but sorrow at the idea of so very young a sheep going astray.”

“Sir,” said young Esmond, bursting out indignantly, “she told me that you yourself were a horrid old man, and had offered to kiss her in the dairy.”

“For shame, Henry,” cried Doctor Tusher, turning as red as a turkey-cock, while my lord continued to roar with laughter.  “If you listen to the falsehoods of an abandoned girl—­”