delicacy, he had sufficient feeling and sense to avoid what he thought
would embarrass a young lady. Amelia's silence and reserve appeared to
him, therefore, as her politic mother had foreseen, just what was
natural and proper. He had been told that she was attached to Sir John
Hunter; and the idea of doubting the truth of what Mrs. Beaumont had
asserted could not enter his confiding mind,

In the mean time, our heroine, to whom the conduct of a double intrigue
was by no means embarrassing, did not neglect the affairs of her dear
Albina: she had found time before breakfast, as she met Miss Hunter
getting out of her carriage, to make herself sure that her notes of
explanation had been understood; and she now, by a multitude of scarcely
perceptible inuendoes, and seemingly suppressed looks of pity, contrived
to carry on the representation she had made to her son of this damsel's
helpless and lovelorn state. Indeed, the young lady appeared as much in
love as could have been desired for stage effect, and rather more than
was necessary for propriety. All Mrs. Beaumont's art, therefore, was
exerted to throw a veil of becoming delicacy over what might have been
too glaring, by hiding half to improve the whole. Where there was any
want of management on the part of her young coadjutrix, she, with
exquisite skill, made advantage even of these errors by look? and sighs,
that implied almost as emphatically as words could have said to her
son--"You see what I told you is too true. The simple creature has not
art enough to conceal her passion. She is undone in the eyes of the
world, if you do not confirm what report has said."

This she left to work its natural effect upon the vanity of man. And in
the midst of these multiplied manoeuvres, Mrs. Beaumont sat with ease
and unconcern, sometimes talking to one, sometimes to another; so that a
stranger would have thought her a party uninterested in all that was