"As much as women ever do tell, Cousin. thought you had been a little épris with her. liking a man who has admired her?"

She owned that she What woman can help

"Why, she hates you, and says you were wild about her, Mr. Warrington!" says Mr. Esmond.

"Spretæ injuria formæ, Cousin!"

"For me, what's for me?" asks the other.

"I never did care for her, and hence, perhaps, she does not love Don't you remember that case of the wife of the Captain of the Guard?”

me.

"Which Guard?" asks Will.

"My Lord Potiphar," says Mr. Warrington.

"Lord Who? My Lord Falmouth is Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, and my Lord Berkeley of the Pensioners. My Lord Hobart had 'em before. Suppose you haven't been long enough in England to know who's who, Cousin !" remarks Mr. William.

But Mr. Warrington explained that he was speaking of a captain of the guard of the king of Egypt, whose wife had persecuted one Joseph for not returning her affection for him. On which Will said that, as for Egypt, he believed it was a confounded long way off; and that, if Lord What-d'ye-call's wife told lies about him, it was like her sex, who, he supposed, were the same everywhere.

Now the truth is, that when he paid his marriage visit to Castlewood, Mr. Warrington had heard from the little Countess her version of the story of differences between Will Esmond and herself. And this tale differed, in some respects, though he is far from saying it is more authentic than the ingenuous narrative of Mr. Will. The lady was grieved to think how she had been deceived in her brother-inlaw. She feared that his life about the Court and town had injured those high principles which all the Esmonds are known to be born with; that Mr. Will's words were not altogether to be trusted; that a loose life and pecuniary difficulties had made him mercenary, blunted his honour, perhaps even impaired the high chivalrous courage "which we Esmonds, Cousin," the little lady said, tossing her head, "which we Esmonds most always possess-leastways, you and me, and my lord, and my cousin Harry have it, I know!' says the Countess. "Oh, Cousin George! and must I confess that I was led to doubt of yours, without which a man of ancient and noble family like ours isn't worthy to be called a man ! I shall try, George, as a

Christian lady, and the head of one of the first families in this kingdom and the whole world, to forgive my brother William for having spoke ill of a member of our family, though a younger branch and by the female side, and made me for a moment doubt of you. He did so. Perhaps he told me ever so many bad things you had said of me."

"I, my dear lady!" cries Mr. Warrington.

"Which he said you said of me, Cousin, and I hope you didn't, and heartily pray you didn't; and I can afford to despise 'em. And he paid me his court, that's a fact; and so have others, and that I'm used to; and he might have prospered better than he did perhaps (for I did not know my dear lord, nor come to vally his great and eminent qualities, as I do out of the fulness of this grateful heart now!), but, oh! I found William was deficient in courage, and no man as wants that can ever have the esteem of Lydia, Countess of Castlewood, no more he can! He said 'twas you that wanted for spirit, Cousin, and angered me by telling me that you was always abusing of me. But I forgive you, George, that I do! And when I tell you that it was he was afraid-the mean skunk !—and actually sent for them constables to prevent the match between you and he, you won't wonder I wouldn't vally a feller like that-no, not that much!" and her ladyship snapped her little fingers. "I say, noblesse oblige, and a man of our family who hasn't got courage, I don't care not this pinch of snuff for him-there, now, I don't! Look at our ancestors, George, round these walls! Haven't the Esmonds always fought for their country and king? Is there one of us that, when the moment arrives, ain't ready to show that he's an Esmond and a nobleman? If my eldest son was to show the white feather, 'My Lord Esmond!' I would say to him (for that's the second title in our family), 'I disown your lordship!" And so saying, the intrepid little woman looked round at her ancestors, whose effigies, depicted by Lely and Kneller, figured round the walls of her drawing-room at Castlewood.

Over that apartment, and the whole house, domain, and village, the new Countess speedily began to rule with an unlimited sway. It was surprising how quickly she learned the ways of command; and, if she did not adopt those methods of precedence usual in England among great ladies, invented regulations for herself, and promulgated them, and made others submit. Having been bred a Dissenter, and

not being over-familiar with the Established Church service, Mr. Warrington remarked that she made a blunder or two during the office (not knowing, for example, when she was to turn her face towards the east, a custom not adopted, I believe, in other Reforming churches, besides the English); but between Warrington's first bridal visit to Castlewood and his second, my lady had got to be quite perfect in that part of her duty, and sailed into chapel on her cousin's arm, her two footmen bearing her ladyship's great prayer-book behind her, as demurely as that delightful old devotee with her lacquey, in Mr. Hogarth's famous picture of "Morning," and as if my Lady Lydia had been accustomed to have a chaplain all her life. She seemed to patronize not only the new chaplain, but the service and the church itself, as if she had never in her own country heard a Ranter in a barn. She made the oldest established families in the countrygrave baronets and their wives-worthy squires of twenty descents, who rode over to Castlewood to pay the bride and bridegroom honour-know their distance, as the phrase is, and give her the pas. She got an old heraldry book; and a surprising old maiden lady from Winton, learned in politeness and genealogies, from whom she learned the court etiquette (as the old Winton lady had known it in Queen Anne's time); and ere long she jabbered gules and sables, bends and saltires, not with correctness always, but with a wonderful volubility and perseverance. She made little progresses to the neighbouring towns in her gilt coach and six, or to the village in her chair, and asserted a quasi-regal right of homage from her tenants and other clodpoles. She lectured the parson on his divinity; the bailiff on his farming; instructed the astonished housekeeper how to preserve and pickle; would have taught the great London footmen to jump behind the carriage, only it was too high for her little ladyship to mount; gave the village gossips instructions how to nurse and take care of their children long before she had one herself; and as for physic, Madam Esmond in Virginia was not more resolute about her pills and draughts than Miss Lydia, the earl's new bride. Do you remember the story of the Fisherman and the Genie, in the "Arabian Nights ?" So one wondered with regard to this lady, how such a prodigious genius could have been corked down into such a little bottle as her body. When Mr. Warrington returned to London after his first nuptial visit, she brought him a little present for her young friends in Dean Street, as she