“Upon second thoughts, I believe it will be best to tell the truth, and the whole truth, to your father, if you should see that nothing else will do——In short, I write in haste, and must trust now, as ever, entirely to your discretion.”
“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Walsingham to his daughter, as the young lady sat at the breakfast table looking over this note, “how long do you mean to sit the picture of The Delicate Embarrassment? To relieve you as far as in me lies, let me assure you that I shall not ask to see this note of Mrs. Beaumont’s, which as usual seems to contain some mighty mystery.”
“No great mystery; only——”
“Only—some minikin mystery?” said Mr. Walsingham. “Yes, ‘Elle est politique pour des choux et des raves.’—This charming widow Beaumont is manoeuvrer.[1] We can’t well make an English word of it. The species, thank Heaven! is not so numerous yet in England as to require a generic name. The description, however, has been touched by one of our poets:
‘Julia’s a manager: she’s born for rule,
And knows her wiser husband is a fool.
For her own breakfast she’ll project a scheme,
Nor take her tea without a stratagem.’
Even from the time when Mrs. Beaumont was a girl of sixteen I remember her manoeuvring to gain a husband, and then manoeuvring to manage him, which she did with triumphant address.”
“What sort of a man was Colonel Beaumont?”
“An excellent man; an open-hearted soldier, of the strictest honour and integrity.”
“Then is it not much in Mrs. Beaumont’s favour, that she enjoyed the confidence of such a man, and that he left her guardian to his son and daughter?”
“If he had lived with her long enough to become acquainted with her real character, what you say, my dear, would be unanswerable. But Colonel Beaumont died a few years after his marriage, and during those few years he was chiefly with his regiment.”