 those hopes, which she thought she might otherwise very reasonably entertain.
The Doctor however had too many resources to be so easily discouraged. He fabricated with admirable ingenuity a story, of which he justly supposed the ignorance and indolence of his patient would prevent his ever detecting the falsehood. He said that he was really a Hamilton, and had taken his present name in compliance with the whim of a distant relation, who had on that condition given him his property. The only objection being thus removed, Miss Maclaurin had a fair field for her attractive talents; and they were so effectually exerted, that in about five months after Lord Castlenorth's reception into the family

of Maclaurin, he became himself a member of it, and Miss Maclaurin returned to England as his wife.
That her father might still retain, without too scrupulous an enquiry, his relationship to the house of Hamilton, and that her mother's coarse figure and coarser manners might be no disgrace to Lady Castlenorth in the sphere where she now prepared to blaze, she prevailed upon them to retire to their native country on a pension which there gave them consequence: while her Ladyship, who while she was Miss Maclaurin had nothing doubted of her own eminent perfections, was now so convinced of their irresistible power by their having thus established her in a situation so much above her hopes, that she thought herself born for the government and amendment of the world, and from that period had been advancing inarrogance and ostentation till the present hour; when at the age of fifty, with an unweildy person and a broad face, where high cheek bones appeared

emulous of giving some protection to two grey prominent eyes, whose lids seemed inadequate to shade them, Lady Castlenorth was as well by her rank as her talents and her travels, qualified in her own opinion for universal dominion. Not content therefore with governing her Lord with despotic sway, (which indeed saved him the trouble and probably the disgrace of governing himself) she assumed towards the rest of the world a style equally dictatorial. Her opinion was strongly enforced on every topic that came before her; in private anecdote, in public debates, in literature, in politics, in fashions, she was equally omniscient; and whether the conversation ran on taxes or on taste, in laying out grounds or on setting out a dinner, in making a peace or a poem, she understood all, descanted on all, and could decide on all, in a way from which few of her auditors had at the moment courage to appeal.

By the side of this majestic figure, her Lord, the descendant
