"His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my lady," says Mrs. Worksop, the housekeeper; and the new Viscountess, after walking down the gallery, came back to the lad, took his hand again, placing her other fair hand on his head, saying some words to him which were so kind, so sweet that the boy felt as if the touch of a superior being, or angel, smote him down to the ground, and he kissed the fair protecting hand as he knelt on one knee. To the very last hour of his life Esmond remembered the lady as she then spoke and looked: the rings on her fair hands, the very scent of her robe, the beam of her eyes lighting up with surprise and kindness, her lips blooming in a smile, the sun making a golden halo round her hair. As the boy was yet in this attitude of humility, enters behind him a portly gentleman, with a little girl of four years old. The gentleman burst into a great laugh at the lady and her adorer, with his little, queer figure, his sallow face, and long black hair. The lady blushed and seemed to deprecate his ridicule by a look of appeal to her husband, for it was my Lord Viscount who now arrived, and whom the lad knew, having once before seen him in the late lord's lifetime. "So this is the little priest!" says my lord, who knew for what calling the lad was intended, and adding: "Welcome, kinsman." "He is saying his prayers to mamma," says the little girl, and my lord burst out into another great laugh at this, and kinsman Harry looked very silly. He invented a half-dozen of speeches in reply, but 'twas months afterwards when he thought of this adventure; as it was, he had never a word in answer. "_Le pauvre enfant, il n'a que nous_," says the lady, looking to her lord; and the boy, who understood her, though doubtless she thought otherwise, thanked her with all his heart for her kind speech. "And he shan't want for friends here," says my lord in a kind voice. "Shall he, little Trix?"