“How?”
“Why you have seen so much more of them than I have—don’t you, my dear madam, see that Miss Walsingham has made a conquest of your son? I thought I was remarkably slow at seeing these things, and yet I saw it.”
“Miss Walsingham is a prodigious favourite of mine. But you know Edward is so young, and men don’t like, now-a-days, to marry young,” said Mrs. Beaumont.
“Well, let them manage their affairs their own way,” said Mr. Palmer; “all I wish upon earth is to see them happy, or rather to hear of their happiness, for I shall not see it you know in Jamaica.”
“Alas!” said Mrs. Beaumont, in a most affectionate tone, and with a sigh that seemed to come from her heart; “alas! that is such a melancholy thought.”
Mr. Palmer ended the conversation by inquiring whom he had best ask to witness his will. Mrs. Beaumont proposed Captain Lightbody and Dr. Wheeler. The doctor was luckily in the house, for he had been sent for this morning, to see her poor Amelia, who had caught cold yesterday, and had a slight feverish complaint.
This was perfectly true. The anxiety that Amelia had suffered of late—the fear of being forced or ensnared to marry a man she disliked—apprehensions about the Spanish incognita, and at last the certainty that Captain Walsingham would not arrive before Mr. Palmer should have left England, and that consequently the hopes she had formed from this benevolent friend’s interference were vain—all these things had overpowered Amelia; she had passed a feverish night, and was really ill. Mrs. Beaumont at any other time would have been much alarmed; for, duplicity out of the question, she was a fond mother: but she now was well contented that her daughter should have a day’s confinement to her room, for the sake of keeping her safe out of the way. So leaving poor Amelia to her feverish thoughts, we proceed with the business of the day.
Dr. Wheeler, Captain Lightbody, and Mr. Twigg witnessed the will; it was executed, and a copy of it deposited with Mrs. Beaumont. This was one great point gained. The next object was her jointure. She had employed her convenient tame man[3], Captain Lightbody, humbly to suggest to her son, that some increase of jointure would be proper; and she was now in anxiety to know how these hints, and others which had been made by more remote means, would operate. As she was waiting to see Mr. Lightbody in her dressing-room, to hear the result of his suggestions, the door opened.
“Well, Lightbody! come in—what success?”
She stopped short, for it was not Captain Lightbody, it was her son. Without taking any notice of what she said, he advanced towards her, and presented a deed.