Too proud to let her mortification be known, Lady Hunter constrained her feelings with all her might. She appeared once more with a pleased countenance in the festive assembly. She received their compliments and congratulations, and invited them, with all the earnestness of friendship, to favour Sir John and her, as soon as possible, with their company at Hunter Hall. The company were now fast departing; carriages came to the door in rapid succession. Lady Hunter went through with admirable grace and variety the sentimental ceremony of taking leave; and when her splendid barouche was at the door, and when she was to bid adieu to her own family, still she acted her part inimitably. In all the becoming mixed smiles and tears of a bride, she was seen embracing by turns her beloved daughter and son, and daughter-in-law and son-in-law, over and over again, in the hall, on the steps; to the last moment contriving to be torn delightfully from the bosom of her family by her impatient bridegroom. Seated beside him in his barouche, she kissed her hand to Mr. Palmer,--smiled: all her family, who stood on the steps, bowed; and Sir John drove away with his prize. “He’s a swindler!” cried Mr. Palmer, “and she is--” “Amelia’s mother,” interrupted Captain Walsingham. “Right,” said Mr. Palmer; “but Amelia had a father too,--my excellent friend, Colonel Beaumont,--whom she and her brother resemble in all that is open-hearted and honourable. Well, well! I make no reflections; I hate moral reflections. Every body can think and feel for themselves, I presume. I only say,--Thank Heaven, we’ve done with _manoeuvring!_” ALMERIA. John Hodgkinson was an eminent and wealthy Yorkshire grazier, who had no children of his own, but who had brought up in his family Almeria Turnbull, the daughter of his wife by a former husband, a Mr. Turnbull. Mr. Turnbull had also been a grazier, but had not been successful in the management of his affairs, therefore he could not leave his daughter any fortune; and at the death of her mother, she became entirely dependent on her father-in-law. Old Hodgkinson was a whimsical man, who, except in eating and drinking, had no inclination to spend any part of the fortune he had made; but, enjoying the consequence which money confers, endeavoured to increase this importance by keeping all his acquaintance in uncertainty, as to what he called his “_testamentary dispositions_.” Sometimes he hinted that his step-daughter should be a match for the proudest riband in England; sometimes he declared, that he did not know of what use money could be to a woman, except to make her a prey to a fortune-hunter, and that his girl should not be left in a way to be duped.