settlement of her family affairs upon her son's coming of age; an event
which was to take place in a few days. The urgent representations of
Mrs. Beaumont, and the anxious desire she expressed to see Mr. Palmer,
had at last prevailed with the good old gentleman to journey down to
Beaumont Park, though he was a valetudinarian, and though he was
obliged, he said, to return to Jamaica with the West India fleet, which
was expected to sail in ten days; so that he announced positively that
he could stay but a week at Beaumont Park with his good friends and
relations.

He was related but distantly to the Beaumonts, and he stood in precisely
the same degree of relationship to the Walsinghams. He had no other
relations, and his fortune was completely at his own disposal. On this
fortune our cunning widow had speculated long and deeply, though in fact
there was no occasion for art: it was Mr. Palmer's intention to leave
his large fortune to the Beaumonts; or to divide it between the Beaumont
and Walsingham families; and had she been sincere in her professed
desire of a complete union by a double marriage between the
representatives of the families, her favourite object would have been,
in either case, equally secure. Here was a plain, easy road to her
object; but it was too direct for Mrs. Beaumont. With all her abilities,
she could never comprehend the axiom that a right line is the shortest
possible line between any two points:--an axiom equally true in morals
and in mathematics. No, the serpentine line was, in her opinion, not
only the most beautiful, but the most expeditious, safe, and convenient.

She had formed a triple scheme of such intricacy, that it is necessary
distinctly to state the argument of her plot, lest the action should be
too complicated to be easily developed.