Read it through once

“Mrs. B. was so polite as to express great regret that, as she was going from home, she could not see us at her house, but hoped, when next we came to Northumberland, we should come to see them at Hexham Abbey. She is a very sweet woman.... Mrs. B. told Lady Charles that they received last year a hundred thousand pounds from their lead mines in Yorkshire; and they never make less than eighty thousand, independent of immense incomes from their other estates. Mrs. B. was dressed in a lavender-coloured satin, with Mechlin lace, long sleeves, and a most beautiful Mechlin veil. The necklace she wore was purchased by her eldest son, a boy of eleven, who sent it from the jeweller’s without asking the price. It is of most beautiful amethysts; the three middle stones are an inch and a half long and an inch wide; the price was nine hundred guineas. Mrs. B. wished to return it; but the Colonel not only confirmed the purchase, but gave his son some thousands to complete the set of amethysts by a bandeau and tiara, a cestus for the waist, armlets, bracelets, brooches, sleeve-clasps, and shoe-knots. All these she wore, and I must confess, for a small dinner-party appeared rather too gaily decorated, particularly as Lady Lorraine’s dress was quite in the contrary extreme. I never saw so strong a contrast ... Colonel Beaumont is generally supposed to be extremely weak, but I sat next him at dinner, and he conducted himself with infinite propriety and great attention and politeness; yet when away from Mrs. Beaumont, he is (they say) quite foolish, and owes everything to her influence.” Added to this cryptic description—cryptic because, read it how we will, we cannot be sure that there is not a subtle touch of sarcasm in the words—is a shrewd observation on another visitor whom she calls Mr. M.