matter over with Dick they decided that Harry should stay where he was,
and abide his fortune; so he stayed on at Castlewood after the garrison
had been ordered away. He was sorry when the kind soldiers vacated
Castlewood, and looked forward with no small anxiety to his fate when the
new lord and lady of the house,--Colonel Francis Esmond and his
wife,--should come to live there. He was now past twelve years old and
had an affectionate heart, tender to weakness, that would gladly attach
itself to somebody, and would not feel at rest until it had found a
friend who would take charge of it.

Then came my lord and lady into their new domain, and my lady's
introduction to the little lad, whom she found in the book-room, as we
have seen.

The instinct which led Henry Esmond to admire and love the gracious
person, the fair apparition, whose beauty and kindness so moved him when
he first beheld her, became soon a passion of gratitude, which entirely
filled his young heart. There seemed, as the boy thought, in her every
look or gesture, an angelic softness and bright pity. In motion or repose
she seemed gracious alike; the tone of her voice, though she spoke words
ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that amounted almost to pain. It
could not be called love, that a lad of his age felt for his mistress:
but it was worship. To catch her glance, to divine her errand and run on
it before she had spoken it; to watch, follow, adore her, became the
business of his life.

As for my Lord Castlewood, he was good-humoured, of a temper naturally
easy, liking to joke, especially with his inferiors, and charmed to
receive the tribute of their laughter. All exercises of the body he could
perform to perfection--shooting at a mark, breaking horses, riding at the