This expedient, however, nearly proved fatal in its consequences. Miss Hunter entered most warmly into the defence of her ear-rings; and appealed to Mr. Beaumont to confirm her decision, that they were the prettiest and best ear-rings in the world. Unluckily, they did not particularly suit his fancy, and the young lady, who had, but half an hour before, professed that she could never be of a different opinion in any thing from that of the man she loved, now pettishly declared that she could not and would not give up her taste. Incensed still more by a bow of submission, but not of conviction, from Mr. Beaumont, she went on regardless of her dearest Mrs. Beaumont’s frowns, and vehemently maintained her judgment, quoting, with triumphant volubility, innumerable precedents of ladies, “who had just bought _the very same_ ear-rings, and whose taste she believed nobody would dispute.” Mr. Beaumont had seen enough, now and upon many other occasions, to be convinced that it is not on matters of consequence that ladies are apt to grow most angry; and he stood confirmed in his belief that those who in theory professed to have such a humble opinion of their own abilities that they cannot do or understand any thing useful, are often, in practice, the most prone to insist upon the infallibility of their taste and judgment. Mrs. Beaumont, who saw with one glance of her quick eye what passed at this moment in her son’s mind, sighed, and said to herself--“How impossible to manage a fool, who ravels, as fast as one weaves, the web of her fortune!” Yet though Mrs. Beaumont perceived and acknowledged the impracticability of managing a fool for a single hour, it was one of the favourite objects of her manoeuvres to obtain this very fool for a daughter-in-law, with the hope of governing her for life. So inconsistent are cunning people, even of the best abilities; so ill do they calculate the value of their ultimate objects, however ingeniously they devise their means, or adapt them to their ends.