partook: the butler no sooner saw her glass empty than he filled it with champagne: the young folks and their mother kept up the conversation, not so much by talking, as by listening appropriately to their friend. She was full of spirits and humour. She seemed to know everybody in Europe, and about those everybodies the wickedest stories. The Countess of Castlewood, ordinarily a very demure, severe woman, and a stickler for the proprieties, smiled at the very worst of these anecdotes; the girls looked at one another and laughed at the maternal signal; the boys giggled and roared with especial delight at their sisters' confusion. They also       partook freely of the wine which the butler handed round, nor did they, or their guest, disdain the bowl of smoking punch, which was laid on the table after the supper. Many and many a night, the Baroness said, she had drunk at that table by her father's side. “That was his place,” she pointed to the place where the Countess now sat. She saw none of the old plate. That was all melted to pay his gambling debts. She hoped, “Young gentlemen, that you don't play.”      

       “Never, on my word,” says Castlewood.     

       “Never, 'pon honour,” says Will—winking at his brother.     

       The Baroness was very glad to hear they were such good boys. Her face grew redder with the punch; and she became voluble, might have been thought coarse, but that times were different, and those critics were inclined to be especially favourable.     

       She talked to the boys about their father, their grandfather—other men and women of the house. “The only man of the family was that,” she said, pointing (with an arm that was yet beautifully round and white)       towards the picture of the military gentleman in the red coat and cuirass, and great black periwig.     

       “The Virginian? What is he good for? I always thought he was good for nothing but to cultivate tobacco and my grandmother,” says my lord, laughing.     

       She struck her hand upon the table with an energy that made the glasses dance. “I say he was the best of you all. There never was one of the male Esmonds that had more brains than a goose, except him. He was not fit for this wicked, selfish old world of ours, and he was right to go and live out of it. Where would your father have been, young people, 

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