ABSTRACT

The information which Mrs Beaumont’s man, Martin, had learned from the servants’ hall, and had communicated to the fisherman’s wife, was more correct, and had been less amplified, embellished, misunderstood, or misrepresented, than is usually found to be the case with pieces of news which are so heard and so repeated. It was true that Mrs Beaumont expected to see on Tuesday an old gentleman, / a Mr Palmer, who had been a friend of her husband’s; he had lately returned from Jamaica, where he had made a large fortune. It is true, also, that this old gentleman was a little particular, but not precisely in the sense in which the fisherman’s wife understood the phrase; he was not particularly fond of john-dorees and turbots, but he was particularly fond of making his fellow-creatures happy; particularly generous, particularly open and honest in his nature, abhorring all artifice himself, and unsuspicious of it in others. He was unacquainted with Mrs Beaumont’s character, as he had been for many years in the West Indies, and he knew her only from her letters, in which she appeared every thing that was candid and amiable. His great friendship for her deceased husband also inclined him to like her. Colonel Beaumont had appointed him one of the guardians of his children, but Mr Palmer, being absent from England, had declined to act: he was also trustee to Mrs Beaumont’s marriage-settlement, and she had represented that it was necessary he should be present at the 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 Indies 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.