She is still willing that he should possess Beatrix.
"I would call you my son," she says, "sooner than the greatest prince in Europe." But she warns him of the nature of her own girl.

"'Tis for my poor Beatrix I tremble, whose headstrong will affrights me, whose jealous temper, and whose vanity no prayers of mine can cure." It is but very gradually that Esmond becomes aware of the truth.

Indeed, he has not become altogether aware of it till the tale closes.

The reader does not see that transfer of affection from the daughter to the mother which would fail to reach his sympathy.

In the last page of the last chapter it is told that it is so,--that Esmond marries Lady Castlewood,--but it is not told till all the incidents of the story have been completed.
But of the three characters I have named, Beatrix is the one that has most strongly exercised the writer's powers, and will most interest the reader.