This sudden and totally unexpected resolution of Mr. Palmer’s so astonished her, that she could scarcely believe she had heard or understood his words rightly. Artful persons may, perhaps, calculate with expertness and accuracy what will, in any given case, be the determinations of the selfish and the interested; but they are liable to frequent mistakes in judging of the open-hearted and the generous: there is no sympathy to guide them, and all their habits tend to mislead them in forming opinions of the direct and sincere. It had never entered into Mrs. Beaumont’s imagination that Mr. Palmer would, notwithstanding his belief that he hazarded his life by so doing, defer a whole year returning to Jamaica, merely to secure the happiness of her son and daughter. She plainly saw that he now suspected her dislike to the Walsinghams, and her aversion to the double union with that family: she saw that the slightest circumstance in her conduct, which confirmed his suspicions, would not only utterly ruin her in his opinion, but might induce him to alter that part of his will which left her sole possessor of his fortune during her life. Bad as her affairs were at this moment, she knew that they might still be worse. She recollected the letter of _perfect approbation_ which Sir John Hunter had in his power. She foresaw that he would produce this letter on the first rumour of her favouring another lover for Amelia. She had just declared to Mr. Palmer, that she never seriously thought of Sir John Hunter for her daughter; and, should this letter be brought to light, she must be irremediably convicted of the basest duplicity, and there would be no escape from the shame of falsehood, or rather the disgrace of detection. In this grand difficulty, Mrs. Beaumont was too good a politician to waste time upon any inferior considerations. Instead of allowing herself leisure to reflect that all her present difficulties arose from her habits of insincerity, she, with the true spirit of intrigue, attributed her disappointments to some deficiency of artifice. “Oh!” said she to herself, “why did I _write?_ I should only have _spoken_ to Sir John. How could I be so imprudent as to _commit_ myself by writing? But what can be done to repair this error?”