the new lord, for whom a feast was got ready, and guns were fired, and
tenants and domestics huzzahed when his carriage rolled into the
court-yard of the Hall, no one took any notice of young Henry Esmond, who
sat alone in the book-room until his new friends found him.

When my lord and lady were going away from the book-room, the little
girl, still holding him by the hand, bade him come too.

"Thou wilt always forsake an old friend for a new one, Trix," says her
father good-naturedly, and went into the gallery, giving an arm to his
lady. They passed thence through the music-gallery, long since
dismantled, and Queen Elizabeth's rooms, in the clock-tower, and out into
the terrace, where was a fine prospect of sunset and the great darkling
woods with a cloud of rooks returning, and the plain and river with
Castlewood village beyond, and purple hills beautiful to look at; and the
little heir of Castlewood, a child of two years old, was already here on
the terrace in his nurse's arms, from whom he ran across the grass
instantly he perceived his mother, and came to her.

"If thou canst not be happy here," says my lord, looking round at the
scene, "thou art hard to please, Rachel."

"I am happy where you are," she said, lovingly; and then my lord began to
describe what was before them to his wife, and what indeed little Harry
knew better than he--viz., the history of the house: how by yonder gate
the page ran away with the heiress of Castlewood, by which the estate
came into the present family; how the Roundheads attacked the
clock-tower, which my lord's father was slain in defending. "I was but
two years old then," says he, "but take forty-six from ninety, and how
old shall I be, kinsman Harry?"