That he had not actually arrived was a comfortable reprieve to Mrs. Beaumont. Breathing more freely, and in refreshed spirits, she prepared to alight from her carriage, to walk to the house with Miss Walsingham, as Mr. Palmer proposed. Miss Hunter, who was dressed with uncommon elegance, remonstrated in favour of her delicate slippers: not that she named the real object of her solicitude--no; she had not spent so much time with Mrs. Beaumont, that great mistress of the art of apologizing, without learning at least the inferior practices of the trade. Of course she had all the little common arts of excuse ever ready: and instead of saying that she did not like to walk because she was afraid to spoil her shoes, she protested she was afraid of the heat, and could not walk so far. But Mr. Beaumont had jumped out of the carriage, and Mrs. Beaumont did not wish that he should walk home _tête-à-tête_ with Miss Walsingham; therefore Miss Hunter’s remonstrances were of no avail. “My love, you, will not be heated, for our walk is through this charming shady grove; and if you are tired, here’s my son will give you his arm.” Satisfied with this arrangement, the young lady, thus supported, found it possible to walk. Mr. Palmer walked his own pace, looking round at the beauties of the place, and desiring that nobody might mind him. This was his way, and Mrs. Beaumont never teased him with talking to him, when he did not seem to be in the humour for it. She, who made something of every thing, began to manage the conversation with her other companions during the walk, so as to favour her views upon the several parties. Pursuing her principle, that love is in men’s minds generally independent of esteem, and believing that her son might be rendered afraid of the superiority of Miss Walsingham’s understanding, Mrs. Beaumont took treacherous pains to _draw her out_. Starting from chance seemingly, as she well knew how, a subject of debate, she went from talking of the late marriage of some neighbouring couple, to discuss a question on which she believed that Miss Walsingham’s opinion would differ from that of her son. The point was, whether a wife should or should not have pin-money. Miss Walsingham thought that a wife’s accepting it would tend to establish a separate interest between married people. Mr. Beaumont, on the contrary, was of opinion, that a wife’s having a separate allowance would prevent disputes. So Miss Hunter thought, of course, for she had been prepared to be precisely of Mr. Beaumont’s opinion; but reasons she had none in its support. Indeed, she said with a pretty simper, she thought that women had nothing to do with reason or reasoning; that she thought a woman who really loved _any body_ was always of that person’s opinion; and especially in a wife she did not see of what use reasoning and _all that_ could be, except to make a woman contradict, and be odd, and fond of ruling: that for her