heir inn, and then
separated, each in quest of the ladies whom he had come to visit.

Mr. Warrington found his aunt installed in handsome lodgings, with a
guard of London lacqueys in her anteroom, and to follow her chair when
she went abroad. She received him with the utmost kindness. His cousin,
my Lady Maria, was absent when he arrived: I don't know whether the
young gentleman was unhappy at not seeing her: or whether he disguised
his feelings, or whether Madame de Bernstein took any note regarding
them.

A beau in a rich figured suit, the first specimen of the kind Harry had
seen, and two dowagers with voluminous hoops and plenty of rouge, were
on a visit to the Baroness when her nephew made his bow to her. She
introduced the young man to these personages as her nephew, the young
Croesus out of Virginia, of whom they had heard. She talked about the
immensity of his estate, which was as large as Kent; and, as she had
read, infinitely more fruitful. She mentioned how her half-sister, Madam
Esmond, was called Princess Pocahontas in her own country. She never
tired in her praises of mother and son, of their riches and their good
qualities. The beau shook the young man by the hand, and was delighted
to have the honour to make his acquaintance. The ladies praised him
to his aunt so loudly that the modest youth was fain to blush at their
compliments. They went away to inform the Tunbridge society of the news
of his arrival. The little place was soon buzzing with accounts of the
wealth, the good breeding, and the good looks of the Virginian.

"You could not have come at a better moment, my dear," the Baroness said
to her nephew, as her visitors departed with many curtseys and congees.
"Those three individuals have the most active tongues in the Wells. They
will trumpet your good qualities in every company where they go. I have
introduced you to a hundred people already, and, Heaven help me! have
told all sorts of fibs about the geography of Virginia in order to
describe your estate. It is a prodigious large one, but I am afraid I
have magnified it. I have filled it with all sorts of wonderful animals,
gold mines, spices; I am not sure I have not said diamonds. As for
your negroes, I have given your mother armies of them, and, in fact,
represented her as a sovereign princess reigning over a magnificent
dominion. So she has a magnificent dominion: I cannot tell to a few
hundred thousand pounds how much her yearly income is,