Our Tunbridge friends were now weary of the Wells, and eager to take their departure. When the autumn should arrive, Bath was Madame de Bernstein’s mark. There were more cards, company, life, there. She would reach it after paying a few visits to her country friends. Harry promised, with rather a bad grace, to ride with Lady Maria and the chaplain to Castlewood. Again they passed by Oakhurst village, and the hospitable house where Harry had been so kindly entertained. Maria made so many keen remarks about the young ladies of Oakhurst, and their setting their caps at Harry, and the mother’s evident desire to catch him for one of them, that, somewhat in a pet, Mr. Warrington said he would pass his friends’ door, as her ladyship disliked and abused them; and was very haughty and sulky that evening at the inn where they stopped, some few miles farther on the road. At supper, my Lady Maria’s smiles brought no corresponding good-humour to Harry’s face; her tears (which her ladyship had at command) did not seem to create the least sympathy from Mr. Warrington; to her querulous remarks he growled a surly reply; and my lady was obliged to go to bed at length without getting a single tete-a-tete with her cousin — that obstinate chaplain, as if by order, persisting in staying in the room. Had Harry given Sampson orders to remain? She departed with a sigh. He bowed her to the door with an obstinate politeness, and consigned her to the care of the landlady and her maid.

What horse was that which galloped out of the inn-yard ten minutes after Lady Maria had gone to her chamber? An hour after her departure from their supper-room, Mrs. Betty came in for her lady’s bottle of smelling-salts, and found Parson Sampson smoking a pipe alone. Mr. Warrington was gone to bed — was gone to fetch a walk in the moonlight — how should he know where Mr. Harry was? Sampson answered, in reply to the maid’s interrogatories. Mr. Warrington was ready to set forward the next morning, and took his place by the side of Lady Maria’s carriage. But his brow was black — the dark spirit was still on him. He hardly spoke to her during the journey. “Great heavens! she must have told him that she stole it!” thought Lady Maria within her own mind.

The fact is, that, as they were walking up that steep hill which lies about three miles from Oakhurst, on the Westerham road, Lady Maria Esmond, leaning on her fond youth’s arm, and indeed very much in love with him, had warbled into his ear the most sentimental vows, protests, and expressions of affection. As she grew fonder, he grew colder. As she looked up in his face, the sun shone down upon hers, which, fresh and well-preserved as it was, yet showed some of the lines and wrinkles of twoscore years; and poor Harry, with that arm leaning on his, felt it intolerably weighty, and by no means relished his walk up the hill. To think that all his life, that drag was to be upon him! It was a dreary look forward and he cursed the moonlight walk, and the hot evening, and the hot wine which had made him give that silly pledge by which he was fatally bound.

Maria’s praises and raptures annoyed Harry beyond measure. The poor thing poured out scraps of the few plays which she knew that had reference to her case, and strove with her utmost power to charm her young companion. She called him, over and over again, her champion, her Henrico, her preserver, and vowed that his Molinda would be ever, ever faithful to him. She clung to him. “Ah, child! have I not thy precious image, thy precious hair, thy precious writing here?” she said, looking in his face. “Shall it not go with me to the grave? It would, sir, were I to meet with unkindness from my Henrico!” she sighed out.

Here was a strange story! Madame Bernstein had given him the little silken case — she had burned the hair and the note which the case contained, and Maria had it still on her heart! It was then, at the start which Harry gave, as she was leaning on his arm — at the sudden movement as if he would drop hers — that Lady Maria felt her first pang of remorse that she had told a fib, or rather, that she was found out in telling a fib, which is a far more cogent reason for repentance. Heaven help us! if some people were to do penance for telling lies, would they ever be out of sackcloth and ashes?

Arrived at Castlewood, Mr. Harry’s good-humour was not increased. My lord was from home; the ladies also were away; the only member of the family whom Harry found, was Mr. Will, who returned from partridge-shooting just as the chaise and cavalcade reached the gate, and who turned very pale when he saw his cousin, and received a sulky scowl of recognition from the young Virginian.

Nevertheless, he thought to put a good face on the matter, and they met at supper, where, before my Lady Maria, their conversation was at first civil, but not lively. Mr. Will had been to some races? To several. He had been pretty successful in his bets? Mr. Warrington hopes. Pretty well. “And you have brought back my horse sound?” asked Mr. Warrington.

“Your horse! what horse?” asked Mr. Will.

“What horse? my horse!” says Mr. Harry, curtly.

“Protest I don’t understand you,” says Will.

“The brown horse for which I played you, and which I won of you the night before you rode away upon it,” says Mr. Warrington, sternly. “You remember the horse, Mr. Esmond.”

“Mr. Warrington, I perfectly well remember playing you for a horse, which my servant handed over to you on the day of your departure.”

“The chaplain was present at our play. Mr. Sampson, will you be umpire between us?” Mr. Warrington said, with much gentleness.

“I am bound to decide that Mr. Warrington played for the brown horse,” says Mr. Sampson.

“Well, he got the other one,” said sulky Mr. Will, with a grin.

“And sold it for thirty shillings!” said Mr. Warrington, always preserving his calm tone.

Will was waggish. “Thirty shillings? and a devilish good price, too, for the broken-kneed old rip. Ha, ha!”

“Not a word more. ’Tis only a question about a bet, my dear Lady Maria. Shall I serve you some more chicken?” Nothing could be more studiously courteous and gay than Mr. Warrington was, so long as the lady remained in the room. When she rose to go, Harry followed her to the door, and closed it upon her with the most courtly bow of farewell. He stood at the closed door for a moment, and then he bade the servants retire. When those menials were gone, Mr. Warrington locked the heavy door before them, and pocketed the key.

As it clicked in the lock, Mr. Will, who had been sitting over his punch, looking now and then askance at his cousin, asked, with one of the oaths which commonly garnished his conversation, what the — Mr. Warrington meant by that?

“I guess there’s going to be a quarrel,” said Mr. Warrington, blandly, “and there is no use in having these fellows look on at rows between their betters.”

“Who is going to quarrel here, I should like to know?” asked Will, looking very pale, and grasping a knife.

“Mr. Sampson, you were present when I played Mr. Will fifty guineas against his brown horse?”

“Against his horse!” bawls out Mr. Will.

“I am not such a something fool as you take me for,” says Mr. Warrington, “although I do come from Virginia!” And he repeated his question: “Mr. Sampson, you were here when I played the Honourable William Esmond, Esquire, fifty guineas against his brown horse?”

“I must own it, sir,” says the chaplain, with a deprecatory look towards his lord’s brother.

“I don’t own no such a thing,” says Mr. Will, with rather a forced laugh.

“No, sir: because it costs you no more pains to lie than to cheat,” said Mr. Warrington, walking up to his cousin. “Hands off, Mr. Chaplain, and see fair play! Because you are no better than a — ha! ——”

No better than a what we can’t say, and shall never know, for as Harry uttered the exclamation, his dear cousin flung a wine bottle at Mr. Warrington’s head, who bobbed just in time, so that the missile flew across the room, and broke against the wainscot opposite, breaking the face of a pictured ancestor of the Esmond family, and then itself against the wall, whence it spirted a pint of good port wine over the chaplain’s face and flowered wig. “Great heavens, gentlemen, I pray you to be quiet!” cried the parson, dripping with gore.

But gentlemen are not inclined at some moments to remember the commands of the Church. The bottle having failed, Mr. Esmond seized the large silver-handled knife and drove at his cousin. But Harry caught up the other’s right hand with his left, as he had seen the boxers do at Marybone; and delivered a rapid blow upon Mr. Esmond’s nose, which sent him reeling up against the oak panels, and I dare say caused him to see ten thousand illuminations. He dropped his knife in his retreat against the wall, which his rapid antagonist kicked under the table.

Now Will, too, had been at Marybone and Hockley-inthe-Hole, and after a gasp for breath and a glare over his bleeding nose at his enemy, he dashed forward his head as though it had been a battering-ram, intending to project it into Mr. Henry Warrington’s stomach.

This manoeuvre Harry had seen, too, on his visit to Marybone, and amongst the negroes upon the maternal estate, who would meet in combat like two concutient cannon-balls, each harder than the other. But Harry had seen and marked the civilised practice of the white man. He skipped aside, and, saluting his advancing enemy with a tremendous blow on the right ear, felled him, so that he struck his head against the heavy oak table and sank lifeless to the ground.

“Chaplain, you will bear witness that it has been a fair fight!” said Mr. Warrington, still quivering with the excitement of the combat, but striving with all his might to restrain himself and look cool. And he drew the key from his pocket and opened the door in the lobby, behind which three or four servants were gathered. A crash of broken glass, a cry, a shout, an oath or two, had told them that some violent scene was occurring within, and they entered, and behold two victims bedabbled with red — the chaplain bleeding port wine, and the Honourable William Esmond, Esquire, stretched in his own gore.

“Mr. Sampson will bear witness that I struck fair, and that Mr. Esmond hit the first blow,” said Mr. Warrington. “Undo his neckcloth, somebody — he may be dead; and get a fleam, Gumbo, and bleed him. Stop! He is coming to himself! Lift him up, you, and tell a maid to wash the floor.”

Indeed, in a minute, Mr. Will did come to himself. First his eyes rolled about, or rather, I am ashamed to say, his eye, one having been closed by Mr. Warrington’s first blow. First, then, his eye rolled about; then he gasped and uttered an inarticulate moan or two, then he began to swear and curse very freely and articulately.

“He is getting well,” said Mr. Warrington.

“Oh, praise be Mussy!” sighs the sentimental Betty.

“Ask him, Gumbo, whether he would like any more?” said Mr. Warrington, with a stern humour.

“Massa Harry say, wool you like any maw?” asked obedient Gumbo, bowing over the prostrate gentleman.

“No, curse you, you black devil!” says Mr. Will, hitting up at the black object before him. (“So he nearly cut my tongue in to in my mouf!” Gumbo explained to the pitying Betty.) “No, that is, yes! You infernal Mohock! Why does not somebody kick him out of the place?”

“Because nobody dares, Mr. Esmond,” says Mr. Warrington, with great state, arranging his ruffles — his ruffled ruffles.

“And nobody won’t neither,” growled the men. They had all grown to love Harry, whereas Mr. Will had nobody’s good word.

“We know all’s fair, sir. It ain’t the first time Master William have been served so.”

“And I hope it won’t be the last,” ............