“Happy!” says she; “but indeed I ought to be, with my children, and—­”

“Not happy!” cried Esmond (for he knew what her life was, though he and his mistress never spoke a word concerning it).  “If not happiness, it may be ease.  Let me stay and work for you—­let me stay and be your servant.”

“Indeed, you are best away,” said my lady, laughing, as she put her hand on the boy’s head for a moment.  “You shall stay in no such dull place.  You shall go to college and distinguish yourself as becomes your name.  That is how you shall please me best; and—­and if my children want you, or I want you, you shall come to us; and I know we may count on you.”

“May heaven forsake me if you may not!” Harry said, getting up from his knee.

“And my knight longs for a dragon this instant that he may fight,” said my lady, laughing; which speech made Harry Esmond start, and turn red; for indeed the very thought was in his mind, that he would like that some chance should immediately happen whereby he might show his devotion.  And it pleased him to think that his lady had called him “her knight,” and often and often he recalled this to his mind, and prayed that he might be her true knight, too.

My lady’s bed-chamber window looked out over the country, and you could see from it the purple hills beyond Castlewood village, the green common betwixt that and the Hall, and the old bridge which crossed over the river.  When Harry Esmond went away for Cambridge, little Frank ran alongside his horse as far as the bridge, and there Harry stopped for a moment, and looked back at the house where the best part of his life had been passed.  It lay before him with its gray familiar towers, a pinnacle or two shining in the sun, the buttresses and terrace walls casting great blue shades on the grass.  And Harry remembered, all his life after, how he saw his mistress at the window looking out on him in a white robe, the little Beatrix’s chestnut curls resting at her mother’s side.  Both waved a farewell to him, and little Frank sobbed to leave him.  Yes, he would be his lady’s true knight, he vowed in his heart; he waved her an adieu with his hat.  The village people had Good-by to say to him too.  All knew that Master Harry was going to college, and most of them had a kind word and a look of farewell.  I do not stop to say what adventures he began to imagine, or what career to devise for himself before he had ridden three miles from home.  He had not read Monsieur Galland’s ingenious Arabian tales as yet; but be sure that there are other folks who build castles in the air, and have fine hopes, and kick them down too, besides honest Alnaschar.

CHAPTER X.

I go to Cambridge, and do but little good there.