“Certainly—certainly,” said Mrs. Beaumont; “there is nothing I love so much as frankness.”
“Then, frankly, Mrs. Beaumont, may I hope for your approbation in addressing Miss Beaumont?”
“Frankly, then, you have my full approbation. This is the very thing I have long secretly wished, as Mr. Palmer can tell you. You have ever been the son-in-law of my choice, though not of my hopes.”
Delighted with this frank answer, this full approbation, this assurance that he had always been the son-in-law of her choice, Captain Walsingham poured out his warm heart in joy and gratitude. All suspicions of Mrs. Beaumont were forgotten; for suspicion was unnatural to his mind: though he knew, though he had experience almost from childhood, of her character, yet, at this instant, he thought he had, till now, been always prejudiced, always mistaken. Happy those who can be thus duped by the warmth of their own hearts! It is a happiness which they who smile in scorn at their credulity can never enjoy.
Wakening a little to the use of his understanding, Captain Walsingham disconcerted Mrs. Beaumont, by suddenly saying, “Then there was not any truth in the report, which I have heard with horror, that you were going to marry Miss Beaumont to Sir John Hunter?”
“Then there was not any truth in the report I heard with horror, that you were going to marry yourself to a Spanish nun?” said Mrs. Beaumont, who had learned from a veteran in public warfare, that the best way to parry an attack is not to defend, but to make an assault.
“My dear Captain Walsingham,” added she, with an arch smile, “I really thought you were a man of too much sense, and above all, too much courage, to be terror-struck by every idle report. You should leave such horrors to us weak women—to the visionary mind. Now, I could not blame poor Amelia, if she were to ask, ‘Then was there no truth in the report of the Spanish incognita?’—No, no,” pursued Mrs. Beaumont, playfully, refusing to hear Captain Walsingham; “not to me, not to me, must your defence be made. Appear before your judge, appear before Amelia; I can only recommend you to mercy.”
What a charming woman this Mrs. Beaumont would be, if one could feel quite sure of her sincerity, thought Captain Walsingham, as he followed the lady, who, with apparently playful, but really polite grace, thus eluded all further inquiry into her secret manoeuvres.
“Here, my dearest Amelia,” cried she, “is a culprit, whom I am bringing to your august tribunal for mercy.”
“For justice,” said Captain Walsingham.