“Hush, indeed. You are a hypocrite, too, Henry, with your grave airs and your glum face. We are all hypocrites. O dear me! We are all alone, alone, alone,” says poor Beatrix, her fair breast heaving with a sigh. “It was I that writ every line of that paper, my dear,” says Mr. Esmond. “You are not so worldly as you think yourself, Beatrix, and better than we believe you. The good we have in us we doubt of; and the happiness that's to our hand we throw away. You bend your ambition on a great marriage and establishment--and why? You'll tire of them when you win them; and be no happier with a coronet on your coach--” “Than riding pillion with Lubin to market,” says Beatrix. “Thank you, Lubin!” “I'm a dismal shepherd, to be sure,” answers Esmond, with a blush; “and require a nymph that can tuck my bed-clothes up, and make me water-gruel. Well, Tom Lockwood can do that. He took me out of the fire upon his shoulders, and nursed me through my illness as love will scarce ever do. Only good wages, and a hope of my clothes, and the contents of my portmanteau. How long was it that Jacob served an apprenticeship for Rachel?” “For mamma?” says Beatrix. “It is mamma your honor wants, and that I should have the happiness of calling you papa?” Esmond blushed again. “I spoke of a Rachel that a shepherd courted five thousand years ago; when shepherds were longer lived than now. And my meaning was, that since I saw you first after our separation--a child you were then . . .” “And I put on my best stockings to captivate you, I remember, sir . . .” “You have had my heart ever since then, such as it was; and such as you were, I cared for no other woman. What little reputation I have won, it was that you might be pleased with it: and indeed, it is not much; and I think a hundred fools in the army have got and deserved quite as much. Was there something in the air of that dismal old Castlewood that made us all gloomy, and dissatisfied, and lonely under its ruined old roof? We were all so, even when together and united, as it seemed, following our separate schemes, each as we sat round the table.” “Dear, dreary old place!” cries Beatrix. “Mamma hath never had the heart to go back thither since we left it, when--never mind how many years ago.” And she flung back her curls, and looked over her fair shoulder at the mirror superbly, as if she said, “Time, I defy you.”