be found, my lovely Zara!” cried Lady Delacour, opening the library door. “Here she is — what doing I know not — studying Hervey’s Meditations on the Tombs, I should guess, by the sanctification of her looks. If you be not totally above all sublunary considerations, admire my lilies of the valley, and let me give you a lecture, not upon heads, or upon hearts, but on what is of much more consequence, upon hoops. Every body wears hoops, but how few —’tis a melancholy consideration — how very few can manage them! There’s my friend Lady C——; in an elegant undress she passes for very genteel, but put her into a hoop and she looks as pitiable a figure, as much a prisoner, and as little able to walk, as a child in a go-cart. She gets on, I grant you, and so does the poor child; but, getting on, you know, is not walking. Oh, Clarence, I wish you had seen the two Lady R.‘s sticking close to one another, their father pushing them on together, like two decanters in a bottle-coaster, with such magnificent diamond labels round their necks!”
Encouraged by Clarence Hervey’s laughter, Lady Delacour went on to mimic what she called the hoop awkwardness of all her acquaintance; and if these could have failed to divert Belinda, it was impossible for her to be serious when she heard Clarence Hervey declare that he was convinced he could manage a hoop as well as any woman in England, except Lady Delacour.
“Now here,” said he, “is the purblind dowager, Lady Boucher, just at the door, Lady Delacour; she would not know my face, she would not see my beard, and I will bet fifty guineas that I come into a room in a hoop, and that she does not find me out by my air — that I do not betray myself, in short, by my masculine awkwardness.”
“I hold you to your word, Clarence,” cried Lady Delacour. “They have let the purblind dowager in; I hear her on the stairs. Here — through this way you can go: as you do every thing quicker than any body else in the world, you will certainly be full dressed in a quarter of an hour; I’ll engage to keep the dowager in scandal for that time. Go! Marriott has old hoops and old finery of mine, and you have all-powerful influence, I know, with Marriott: so go and use it, and let us see you in all your glory — though I vow I tremble for my fifty guineas.”
Lady Delacour kept the dowager in scandal, according to her engagement, for a good quarter of an hour; then the dresses at the drawing-room took up another quarter; and, at last, the dowager began to give an account of sundry wonderful cures that had been performed, to her certain knowledge, by her favourite concentrated extract or anima of quassia. She entered into the history of the negro slave named Quassi, who discovered this medical wood, which he kept a close secret till Mr. Daghlberg, a magistrate of Surinam, wormed it out of him, brought a branch of the tree to Europe, and communicated it to the great Linnaeus — when Clarence Hervey was announced by the title of “The Countess de Pomenars.”
“An émigrée — a charming woman!” whispered Lady Delacour “she was to have been at the drawing-room to-day but for a blunder of mine: ready dressed she was, and I didn’t call for her! Ah, Mad. de Pomenars, I am actually ashamed to see you,” continued her ladyship; and she went forward to meet Clarence Hervey, who really made his entrée with very composed assurance and grace. He managed his hoop with such skill and dexterity, that he well deserved the praise of being a universal genius. The Countess de Pomenars spoke French and broken English incomparably well, and she made out that she was descended from the Pomenars of the time of Mad. de Sevigné: she said that she had in her possession several original letters of Mad. de Sevigné, and a lock of Mad. de Grignan’s fine hair.
“I have sometimes fancied, but I believe it is only my fancy,” said Lady Delacour, “that this young lady,” turning to Belinda, “is not unlike your Mad. de Grignan. I have seen a picture of her at Strawberry-hill.”
Mad. de Pomenars acknowledged that there was a resemblance, but added, that it was flattery in the extreme to Mad. de Grignan to say so.
“It would be a sin, undoubtedly, to waste flattery upon the dead, my dear countess,” said Lady Delacour; “but here, without flattery to the living, as you have a lock of Mad. de Grignan’s hair, you can tell us whether la belle chevelure, of which Mad. de Sevigné talked so much, was any thing to be compared to my Belinda’s.” As she spoke, Lady Delacour, before Belinda was aware of her intentions, dexterously let down her beautiful tresses; and the Countess de Pomenars was so much struck at the sight, that she was incapable of paying the necessary compliments. “Nay, touch it,” said Lady Delacour —“it is so fine and so soft.”
At this dangerous moment her ladyship artfully let drop the comb. Clarence Hervey suddenly stooped to pick it up, totally forgetting his hoop and his character. He threw down the music-stand with his hoop. Lady Delacour exclaimed “Bravissima!” and burst out a-laughing. Lady Boucher, in amazement, looked from one to another for an explanation, and was a considerable time before, as she said, she could believe her own eyes. Clarence Hervey acknowledged he had lost his bet, joined in the laugh, and declared that fifty guineas was too little to pay for the sight of the finest hair that he had ever beheld. “I declare he deserves a lock of la belle chevelure for that speech, Miss Portman,” cried Lady Delacour; “I’ll appeal to all the world — Mad. de Pomenars must have a lock to measure with Mad. de Grignan’s? Come, a second rape of the lock, Belinda.”
Fortunately for Belinda, “the glittering forfex” was not immediately produced, as fine ladies do not now, as in former times, carry any such useless implements about with them.
Such was the modest, graceful dignity of Miss Portman’s manners, that she escaped without even the charge of prudery. She retired to her own apartment as soon as she could.
“She passes on in unblenched majesty,” said Lady Delacour.
“She is really a charming woman,” said Clarence Hervey, in a low voice, to Lady Delacour, drawing her into a recessed window: he in the same low voice continued, “Could I obtain a private audience of a few minutes when your ladyship is at leisure? — I have —” “I am never at leisure,” interrupted Lady Delacour; “but if you have any thing particular to say to me-as I guess you have, by my skill in human nature — come here to my concert to-night, before the rest of the world. Wait patiently in the music-room, and perhaps I may grant you a private audience, as you had the grace not to call it a tête-à-tête. In the mean time, my dear Countess de Pomenars, had we not better take off our hoops?” In the evening, Clarence Hervey was in the music-room a considerable time before Lady Delacour appeared: how patiently he waited is not known to any one but himself.
“Have not I given you time to compose a charming speech?” said Lady Delacour as she entered the room; “but make it as short as you can, unless you wish that Miss Portman should hear it, for she will be down stairs in three minutes.”
“In one word, then, my dear Lady Delacour, can you, and will you, make my peace with Miss Portman? — I am much concerned about that foolish razor-strop dialogue which she overheard at Lady Singleton’s.”
“You are concerned that she overheard it, no doubt.”
“No,” said Clarence Hervey, “I am rejoiced that she overheard it, since it has been the means of convincing me of my mistake; but I am concerned that I had the presumption and injustice to judge of Miss Portman so hastily. I am convinced that, though she is a niece of Mrs. Stanhope’s, she has dignity of mind and simplicity of character. Will you, my dear Lady Delacour, tell her so?”
“Stay,” interrupted Lady Delacour; “let me get it by heart. I should have made a terrible bad messenger of the gods and goddesses, for I never in my life could, like Iris, repeat a message in the same words in which it was delivered to me. Let me see —‘Dignity of mind and simplicity of character,’ was not it? May not I say at once, ‘My dear Belinda, Clarence Hervey desires me to tell you that he is convinced you are an angel?’ That single word angel is so expressive, so comprehensive, so comprehensible, it contains, believe me, all that can be said or imagined on these occasions, de part et d’autre.”
“But,” said Mr. Hervey, “perhaps Miss Portman has heard the song of —
‘What know we of angels? — I spake it in jest.’”
“Then