My lord laughed again, in high good-humour, exclaiming with one of his usual oaths, "The little minx sees everything. She saw the dowager's paint t'other day, and asked her why she wore that red stuff--didn't you, Trix? And the Tower; and St. James's; and the play; and the Prince George; and the Princess Ann--didn't you, Trix?" "They are both very fat, and smelt of brandy," the child said. Papa roared with laughing. "Brandy!" he said. "And how do you know, Miss Pert?" "Because your lordship smells of it after supper, when I kiss you before I go to bed," said the young lady, who indeed was as pert as her father said, and looked as beautiful a little gipsy as eyes ever gazed on. "And now for my lady," said my lord, going up the stairs, and passing alone under the tapestry curtain that hung before the drawing-room door. Esmond always remembered that noble figure, handsomely arrayed in scarlet. Within the last few months he himself had grown from a boy to be a man, and with his figure his thoughts had shot up, and grown manly. After her lord's return, Harry Esmond watched my lady's countenance with solicitous affection, and noting its sad, depressed look realised that there was a marked change in her. In her eagerness to please her husband she practised a hundred arts which had formerly pleased him, charmed him, but in vain. Her songs did not amuse him, and she hushed them and the children when in his presence. Her silence annoyed him as much as her speech; and it seemed as if nothing she could do or say could please him. But for Harry Esmond his benefactress' sweet face had lost none of its charms. It had always the kindest of looks and smiles for him; not so gay and artless perhaps as those which Lady Castlewood had formerly worn, but out of her griefs and cares, as will happen when trials fall upon a kindly heart, grew up a number of thoughts and virtues which had never come into existence, had not her sorrow given birth to them.