sleep at once. Good-natured to a fault, and somewhat
vacillating in character, he adopted the manner and the code of the
rich young idlers who were his equals at College. He became, like
them, careless, extravagant, and fond of pleasure. This change, if it
deteriorated his mind, improved his exterior. It was a change that
could not but please women; and of all women his mother the most. Mrs.
Beaufort was a lady of high birth; and in marrying her, Robert had hoped
much from the interest of her connections; but a change in the ministry
had thrown her relations out of power; and, beyond her dowry, he
obtained no worldly advantage with the lady of his mercenary choice.
Mrs. Beaufort was a woman whom a word or two will describe. She was
thoroughly commonplace--neither bad nor good, neither clever nor silly.
She was what is called well-bred; that is, languid, silent, perfectly
dressed, and insipid. Of her two children, Arthur was almost the
exclusive favourite, especially after he became the heir to such
brilliant fortunes. For she was so much the mechanical creature of the
world, that even her affection was warm or cold in proportion as the
world shone on it. Without being absolutely in love with her husband,
she liked him--they suited each other; and (in spite of all the
temptations that had beset her in their earlier years, for she had been
esteemed a beauty--and lived, as worldly people must do, in circles
where examples of unpunished gallantry are numerous and contagious) her
conduct had ever been scrupulously correct. She had little or no feeling
for misfortunes with which she had never come into contact; for those
with which she had--such as the distresses of younger sons, or the
errors of fashionable women, or the disappointments of "a proper
ambition"--she had more sympathy than might have been supposed, and
touched on them with all the tact of well-bred charity and ladylike
forbearance. Thus, though she was regarded as a strict person in point
of moral decorum, yet in society she was popular-as women at once pretty
and inoffensive generally are.

To do Mrs. Beaufort justice, she had not been privy to the letter her
husband wrote to Catherine, although not wholly innocent of it. The fact
is, that Robert had never mentioned to her the peculiar circumstances
that made Catherine an exception from ordinary rules--the generous
propositions of his brother to him the night before his death; and,
whatever his incredulity as