vol. ii., and of whose youthful appearance we are continually reminded
("she looks the sister of her daughter" says the old Dowager at
Chelsea), is certainly not superficially obvious. Nor was it obvious to
Lady Castlewood's children, "Mother's in love with you,--yes, I think
mother's in love with you," says downright Frank Esmond; the only
impediment in his eyes being the bar sinister, as yet unremoved. And
Miss Beatrix herself, in vol. iii., is even more roundly explicit. "As
for you," she tells Esmond, "you want a woman to bring your slippers and
cap, and to sit at your feet, and cry 'O caro! O bravo!' whilst you read
your Shakespeares, and Miltons, and stuff" [which shows that she herself
had read Swift's _Grand Question Debated_]. "Mamma would have been the
wife for you, had you been a little older, though you look ten years
older than she does," "You do, you glum-faced, blue-bearded, little old
man!" adds this very imperious and free-spoken young lady. The situation
is, no doubt, at times extremely difficult, and naturally requires
consummate skill in the treatment. But if these things and others
signify anything to an intelligent reader, they signify that the author,
if he had not his end steadily in view, knew perfectly well that his
story was tending in one direction. There will probably always be some
diversity of opinion in the matter; but the majority of us have accepted
Thackeray's solution, and have dropped out of sight that hint of
undesirable rivalry, which so troubled the precisians of the early
Victorian age. To those who read _Esmond_ now, noting carefully the
almost imperceptible transformation of the motives on either side, as
developed by the evolution of the story, the union of the hero and
heroine at the end must appear not only credible but preordained. And
that the gradual progress towards this foregone conclusion is handled
with unfailing tact and skill, there can surely be no question.[67]

Note: