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 her lonely life, and clung to the kindness she met with at Pleasance.

Aileen's wedding was the first of the three that took place; but as an accurate account of it may be read in any number of the 'Court Journal,' no description is required of it here. There is a frightful sameness in all those great weddings, but the day itself was propitious to the Hopkinsons. Their star was evidently on the ascendant this year. The Duke of St. Maur had engaged in one of those little light speculations, with which people of colossal fortune are apt to amuse themselves, sometimes to the ruin, sometimes to the improvement of their overgrown incomes. He was muddling away two or £300,000 in making a pier and a harbour on the coast of a county, half of which, at least, was his property. The agent in charge of these works had died suddenly; and when the Duke mentioned, incidentally, the difficulty he had to find a trustworthy successor, it occurred to Arthur that Captain Hopkinson would be just the person for the