The Colonel was not indeed very intimate with the English language so as to enjoy and understand its delicacies and niceties; but he was sufficiently well acquainted with the language and air and style of fashionable impertinence and coxcomical exclusiveness, and he could laugh remarkably well. He was also exceedingly well-dressed, and had that exquisitely ridiculous military air, which if it be not the glory is at least the pride of most of those green ones who have entered the army since 1815. The Colonel had also in very great perfection the imitative faculty, which enabled him to catch to the very life the manners of the people with whom he associated. He caught with great facility all the fashionable fool’s tricks of the dinner-table; and notwithstanding his imperfect knowledge of the English language, he had no difficulty in understanding and in making himself understood in all matters touching eating and drinking: on these subjects he was eloquent and animated. The Colonel was not a very young man, as may be inferred from the age of his daughter, but he had the air and manners of youth; and he was thus more ridiculous, if possible, than those young men with whom he chiefly associated. This, however, could be said for him which could not be said for them; namely, that he had seen actual and severe service, and had undergone many hardships: there was therefore something of philosophy in his very flippancy of character and manner. Of a gentleman of this description while sauntering about in time of peace, it is very clear that the historian’s pen can have little or nothing to record: nor can our readers be much surprised if, when speaking of the interests of Clara Rivolta, we should say little or nothing of her father as influencing her destiny or directing her actions. It is not indeed to be supposed that such a woman as Signora Rivolta should pay very great deference to the opinions of Colonel Rivolta, even if he had any opinions, which, by the way, he had not. If any of our readers are astonished at the fact that the daughter of John Martindale should, in spite of all her good natural understanding, have condescended to marry such a man as Colonel Rivolta, we can only say that such readers must have a very limited circle of acquaintance, or be gifted with the not unusual faculty of being blind to one half of that which passes immediately before their eyes. We have hinted before at this apparent incongruity, and our reference to it again in this place to account for the omission of Colonel Rivolta’s name or observations in some part of our narrative, which is now about to be opened; and we wish also to avoid any thing which might appear disrespectful to the nobler sex: for it would be very wrong to represent the disposal of a daughter’s hand as being more at the will or under the influence of the mother than of the father, unless some special and peculiar reason were given for the fact.