Of the pupils the two young people were but lazy scholars, and as my lady would admit no discipline such as was then in use, my lord’s son only learned what he liked, which was but little, and never to his life’s end could be got to construe more than six lines of Virgil.  Mistress Beatrix chattered French prettily, from a very early age; and sang sweetly, but this was from her mother’s teaching—­not Harry Esmond’s, who could scarce distinguish between “Green Sleeves” and “Lillibullero;” although he had no greater delight in life than to hear the ladies sing.  He sees them now (will he ever forget them?) as they used to sit together of the summer evenings—­the two golden heads over the page—­the child’s little hand, and the mother’s beating the time, with their voices rising and falling in unison.

But if the children were careless, ’twas a wonder how eagerly the mother learnt from her young tutor—­and taught him too.  The happiest instinctive faculty was this lady’s—­a faculty for discerning latent beauties and hidden graces of books, especially books of poetry, as in a walk she would spy out field-flowers and make posies of them, such as no other hand could.  She was a critic, not by reason but by feeling; the sweetest commentator of those books they read together; and the happiest hours of young Esmond’s life, perhaps, were those passed in the company of this kind mistress and her children.

These happy days were to end soon, however; and it was by the Lady Castlewood’s own decree that they were brought to a conclusion.  It happened about Christmas-time, Harry Esmond being now past sixteen years of age, that his old comrade, adversary, and friend, Tom Tusher, returned from his school in London, a fair, well-grown, and sturdy lad, who was about to enter college, with an exhibition from his school, and a prospect of after promotion in the church.  Tom Tusher’s talk was of nothing but Cambridge now; and the boys, who were good friends, examined each other eagerly about their progress in books.  Tom had learned some Greek and Hebrew, besides Latin, in which he was pretty well skilled, and also had given himself to mathematical studies under his father’s guidance, who was a proficient in those sciences, of which Esmond knew nothing; nor could he write Latin so well as Tom, though he could talk it better, having been taught by his dear friend the Jesuit Father, for whose memory the lad ever retained the warmest affection, reading his books, keeping his swords clean in the little crypt where the Father had shown them to Esmond on the night of his visit; and often of a night sitting in the chaplain’s room, which he inhabited, over his books, his verses, and rubbish, with which the lad occupied himself, he would look up at the window, thinking he wished it might open and let in the good Father.  He had come and passed away like a dream; but for the swords and books Harry might almost think the Father was an imagination of his mind—­and for two letters which had come to him, one from abroad, full of advice and affection, another soon after he had been confirmed by the Bishop of Hexton, in which Father Holt deplored his falling away.  But Harry Esmond felt so confident now of his being in the right, and of his own powers as a casuist, that he thought he was able to face the Father himself in argument, and possibly convert him.