Now you'll meet those young men continually who took the liberty of laughing at your aunt, and your cousins, and yourself; they are men of fashion. Show them you've no feeling, and they'll acknowledge you for a woman of fashion. You'll marry better than any of your cousins,--Clarence Hervey if you can; and then it will be your turn to laugh about nets and cages. As to love and all that--"

The carriage stopped at the Pantheon just as her ladyship came to the words "love and all that." Her thoughts took a different turn, and during the remainder of the night she exhibited, in such a manner as to attract universal admiration, all the ease, and grace, and gaiety, of Euphrosyne.

To Belinda the night appeared long and dull: the commonplace wit of chimney-sweepers and gipsies, the antics of harlequins, the graces of flower-girls and Cleopatras, had not power to amuse her; for her thoughts still recurred to that conversation which had given her so much pain--a pain which Lady Delacour's raillery had failed to obliterate.

"How happy you are, Lady Delacour," said she, when they got into the carriage to go home; "how happy you are to have such an amazing flow of spirits!"

"Amazing you might well say, if you knew all," said Lady Delacour; and she heaved a deep sigh, threw herself back in the carriage, let fall her mask, and was silent. It was broad daylight, and Belinda had a full view of her countenance, which was the picture of despair. She uttered not one syllable more, nor had Miss Portman the courage to interrupt her meditations till they came within sight, of Lady Singleton's, when Belinda ventured to remind her that she had resolved to stop there and change dresses before Marriott saw them.

"No, it's no matter," said Lady Delacour; "Marriott will leave me at the last, like all the rest--'tis no matter." Her ladyship sunk back into her former att.i.tude; but after she had remained silent for some minutes, she started up and exclaimed--

"If I had served myself with half the zeal that I have served the world, I should not now be thus forsaken! I have sacrificed reputation, happiness, every thing to the love of frolic:--all frolic will soon be at an end with me--I am dying--and I shall die unlamented by any human being. If I were to live my life over again, what a different life it should be!--What a different person _I would be!_[1]--But it is all over now--I am dying."

Belinda's astonishment at these words, and at the solemn manner in which they were p.r.o.nounced, was inexpressible; she gazed at Lady Delacour, and then repeated the word,--'dying!'--"Yes, dying!" said Lady Delacour.

"But you seem to me, and to all the world, in perfect health; and but half an hour ago in perfect spirits," said Belinda.

"I seem to you and to all the world, what I am not--I tell you I am dying," said her ladyship in an emphatic tone.

Not a word more pa.s.sed till they got home. Lady Delacour hurried up stairs, bidding Belinda follow her to her dressing-room. Marriott was lighting the six wax candles on the dressing-table.--"As I live, they have changed dresses after all," said Marriott to herself, as she fixed her eyes upon Lady Delacour and Miss Portman. "I'll be burnt, if I don't make my lady remember this."

"Marriott, you need not wait; I'll ring when I want you," said Lady Delacour; and taking one of the candles from the table, she pa.s.sed on hastily with Miss Portman through her dressing-room, through her bedchamber, and to the door of the mysterious cabinet.

"Marriott, the key of this door," cried she impatiently, after she had in vain attempted to open it.

"Heavenly graciousness!" cried Marriott; "is my lady out of her senses?"

"The key--the key--quick, the key," repeated Lady Delacour, in a peremptory tone. She seized it as soon as Marriott drew it from her pocket, and unlocked the door.

"Had not I best put _the things_ to rights, my lady?" said Marriott, catching fast hold of the opening door.

"I'll ring when you are wanted, Marriott," said Lady Delacour; and pushing open the door with violence she rushed forward to the middle of the room, and turning back, she beckoned to Belinda to follow her--"Come in; what is it you are afraid of?" said she. Belinda went on, and the moment she was in the room, Lady Delacour shut and locked the door. The room was rather dark, as there was no light in it except what came from the candle which Lady Delacour held in her hand, and which burned but dimly. Belinda, as she looked round, saw nothing but a confusion of linen rags; vials, some empty, some full, and she perceived that there was a strong smell of medicines.

Lady Delacour, whose motions were all precipitate, like those of a person whose mind is in great agitation, looked from side to side of the room, without seeming to know what she was in search of. She then, with a species of fury, wiped the paint from her face, and returning to Belinda, held the candle so as to throw the light full upon her livid features. Her eyes were sunk, her cheeks hollow; no trace of youth or beauty remained on her death-like countenance, which formed a horrid contrast with her gay fantastic dress.

"You are shocked, Belinda," said she; "but as yet you have seen nothing--look here,"--and baring one half of her bosom, she revealed a hideous spectacle.

Belinda sunk back into a chair; Lady Delacour flung herself on her knees before her.

"Am I humbled, am I wretched enough?" cried she, her voice trembling with agony. "Yes, pity me for what you have seen, and a thousand times more for that which you cannot see:--my mind is eaten away like my body by incurable disease--inveterate remorse--remorse for a life of folly--of folly which has brought on me all the punishments of guilt."

"My husband," continued she, and her voice suddenly altered from the tone of grief to that of anger--"my husband hates me--no matter--I despise him. His relations hate me--no matter--I despise them. My own relations hate me--no matter, I never wish to see them more--never shall they see my sorrow--never shall they hear a complaint, a sigh from me.

There is no torture which I could not more easily endure than their insulting pity. I will die, as I have lived, the envy and admiration of the world. When I am gone, let them find out their mistake; and moralize, if they will, over my grave." She paused. Belinda had no power to speak.

"Promise, swear to me," resumed Lady Delacour vehemently, seizing Belinda's hand, "that you will never reveal to any mortal what you have seen and heard this night. No living creature suspects that Lady Delacour is dying by inches, except Marriott and that woman whom but a few hours ago I thought my _real friend_, to whom I trusted every secret of my life, every thought of my heart. Fool! idiot! dupe that I was to trust to the friendship of a woman whom I knew to be without principle: but I thought she had honour; I thought she could never betray _me_,--O Harriot! Harriot! you to desert me!--Any thing else I could have borne--but you, who I thought would have supported me in the tortures of mind and body which I am to go through--you that I thought would receive my last breath--you to desert me!--Now I am alone in the world--left to the mercy of an insolent waiting-woman."

Lady Delacour hid her face in Belinda's lap, and almost stifled by the violence of contending emotions, she at last gave vent to them, and sobbed aloud.

"Trust to one," said Belinda, pressing her hand, with all the tenderness which humanity could dictate, "who will never leave you at the mercy of an insolent waiting-woman--trust to me."

"Trust to you!" said Lady Delacour, looking up eagerly in Belinda's face; "yes--I think--I may trust to you; for though a niece of Mrs.

Stanhope's, I have seen this day, and have seen with surprise, symptoms of artless feeling about you. This was what tempted me to open my mind to you when I found that I had lost the only friend--but I will think no more of that--if you have a heart, you must feel for me.--Leave me now--tomorrow you shall hear my whole history--now I am quite exhausted--ring for Marriott." Marriott appeared with a face of constrained civility and latent rage. "Put me to bed, Marriott," said Lady Delacour, with a subdued voice; "but first light Miss Portman to her room--she need not--yet--see the horrid business of my toilette."

Belinda, when she was left alone, immediately opened her shutters, and threw up the sash, to refresh herself with the morning air. She felt excessively fatigued, and in the hurry of her mind she could not think of any thing distinctly. She took off her masquerade dress, and went to bed in hopes of forgetting, for a few hours, what she felt indelibly impressed upon her imagination. But it was in vain that she endeavoured to compose herself to sleep; her ideas were in too great and painful confusion. For some time, whenever she closed her eyes, the face and form of Lady Delacour, such as she had just beheld them, seemed to haunt her; afterwards, the idea of Clarence Hervey, and the painful recollection of the conversation she had overheard, recurred to her: the words, "Do you think I don't know that Belinda Portman is a composition of art and affectation?" fixed in her memory. She recollected with the utmost minuteness every look of contempt which she had seen in the faces of the young men whilst they spoke of Mrs. Stanhope, the match-maker.

Belinda's mind, however, was not yet sufficiently calm to reflect; she seemed only to live over again the preceding night. At last, the strange motley figures which she had seen at the masquerade flitted before her eyes, and she sunk into an uneasy slumber.

CHAPTER III.

LADY DELACOUR'S HISTORY.

Miss Portman was awakened by the ringing of Lady Delacour's bedchamber bell. She opened her eyes with the confused idea that something disagreeable had happened; and before she had distinctly recollected herself, Marriott came to her bedside, with a note from Lady Delacour: it was written with a pencil.

"DELACOUR--_my_ lord!!!! is to have to-day what Garrick used to call a _gander feast_--will you dine with me tete-a-tete, and I'll write an _excuse_, alias a lie, to Lady Singleton, in the form of a charming note--I pique myself _sur l'eloquence du billet_--then we shall have the evening to ourselves. I have much to say, as people usually have when they begin to talk of themselves.

"I have taken a double dose of opium, and am not so horribly out of spirits as I was last night; so you need not be afraid of another _scene_.

"Let me see you in my dressing-room, dear Belinda, as soon as you have adored

'With head uncover'd the cosmetic powers.'

"But you don't paint--no matter--you will--you must--every body must, sooner or later. In the mean time, whenever you want to send a note that shall not be opened by _the bearer_, put your trust neither in wafer nor wax, but twist it as I twist mine. You see I wish to put you in possession of some valuable secrets before I leave this world--this, by-the-bye, I don't, upon second thoughts, which are always best, mean to do yet. There certainly were such people as Amazons--I hope you admire them--for who could live without the admiration of Belinda Portman?--not Clarence Hervey a.s.suredly--nor yet

"T. C. H. DELACOUR."

Belinda obeyed the summons to her ladyship's dressing-room: she found Lady Delacour with her face completely repaired with paint, and her spirits with opium. She was in high consultation with Marriott and Mrs.

Franks, the milliner, about the c.r.a.pe petticoat of her birthnight dress, which was extended over a large hoop in full state. Mrs. Franks descanted long and learnedly upon festoons and loops, knots and fringes, submitting all the time every thing to her ladyship's better judgment.

Marriott was sulky and silent. She opened her lips but once upon the question of laburnum or no laburnum flowers.

Against them she quoted the memoirs and authority of the celebrated Mrs.

Bellamy, who has a case in point to prove that "straw colour must ever look like dirty white by candlelight." Mrs. Franks, to compromise the matter, proposed gold laburnums, "because nothing can look better by candlelight, or any light, than gold;" and Lady Delacour, who was afraid that the milliner's imagination, now that it had once touched upon gold, might be led to the vulgar idea of _ready money_, suddenly broke up the conference, by exclaiming,

"We shall be late at Phillips's exhibition of French china. Mrs. Franks must let us see her again to-morrow, to take into consideration your court dress, my dear Belinda--'Miss Portman presented by Lady Delacour'--Mrs. Franks, let her dress, for heaven's sake, be something that will make a fine paragraph:--I give you four-and-twenty hours to think of it. I have done a horrid act this day," continued she, after Mrs. Franks had left the room--"absolutely written a _twisted_ note to Clarence Hervey, my dear--but why did I tell you that? Now your head will run upon the twisted note all day, instead of upon 'The Life and Opinions of a Lady of Quality, related by herself.'"

After dinner Lady Delacour having made Belinda protest and blush, and blush and protest, that her head was not running upon the twisted note, began the history of her life and opinions in the following manner:--

"I do nothing by halves, my dear. I shall not tell you my adventures as Gil Blas told his to the Count d'Olivarez--skipping over the _useful_ pa.s.sages. I am no hypocrite, and have nothing worse than folly to conceal: that's bad enough--for a woman who is known to play the fool is always suspected of playing the devil. But I begin where I ought to end--with my moral, which I dare say you are not impatient to antic.i.p.ate. I never read or listened to a moral at the end of a story in my life:--manners for me, and morals for those that like them. My dear, you will be woefully disappointed if in my story you expect any thing like a novel. I once heard a general say, that nothing was less like a review than a battle; and I can tell you that nothing is more unlike a novel than real life. Of all lives, mine has been the least romantic.

No love in it, but a great deal of hate. I was a rich heiress--I had, I believe, a hundred thousand pounds, or more, and twice as many caprices: I was handsome and witty--or, to speak with that kind of circ.u.mlocution which is called humility, the world, the partial world, thought me a beauty and a bel-esprit. Having told you my fortune, need I add, that I, or it, had lovers in abundance--of all sorts and degrees--not to reckon those, it may be presumed, who died of concealed pa.s.sions for me? I had sixteen declarations and proposals in form; then what in the name of wonder, or of common sense--which by-the-bye is the greatest of wonders--what, in the name of common sense, made me marry Lord Delacour?

Why, my dear, you--no, not _you_, but any girl who is not used to have a parcel of admirers, would think it the easiest thing in the world to make her choice; but let her judge by what she feels when a dexterous mercer or linen-draper produces pretty thing after pretty thing--and this is so becoming, and this will wear for ever, as he swears; but then that's so fashionable;--the novice stands in a charming perplexity, and after examining, and doubting, and tossing over half the goods in the shop, it's ten to one, when it begins to get late, the young lady, in a hurry, pitches upon the very ugliest and worst thing that she has seen.

Just so it was with me and my lovers, and just so--

'Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,'

I pitched upon Viscount Delacour for my lord and judge. He had just at that time lost at Newmarket more than he was worth in every sense of the word; and my fortune was the most convenient thing in the world to a man in his condition. Lozenges are of sovereign use in some complaints. The heiress lozenge is a specific in some consumptions. You are surprised that I can laugh and jest about such a melancholy thing as my marriage with Lord Delacour; and so am I, especially when I recollect all the circ.u.mstances; for though I bragged of there being no love in my history, there was when I was a goose or a gosling of about eighteen--just your age, Belinda, I think--something very like love playing about my heart, or my head. There was a certain Henry Percival, a Clarence Hervey of a man--no, he had ten times the sense, begging your pardon, of Clarence Hervey--his misfortune, or mine, was, that he had too much sense--he was in love with me, but not with my faults; now I, wisely considering that my faults were the greatest part of me, insisted upon his being in love with my faults. He wouldn't, or couldn't--I said wouldn't, he said couldn't. I had been used to see the men about me lick the dust at my feet, for it was gold dust. Percival made wry faces--Lord Delacour made none. I pointed him out to Percival as an example--it was an example he would not follow. I was provoked, and I married in hopes of provoking the man I loved. The worst of it was, I did not provoke him as much as I expected. Six months afterwards I heard of his marriage with a very amiable woman. I hate those _very amiable women_. Poor Percival! I should have been a very happy woman, I fancy, if I had married you--for I believe you were the only man who ever really loved me; but all that is over now!--Where were we? O, I married my Lord Delacour, knowing him to be a fool, and believing that, for this reason, I should find no trouble in governing him. But what a fatal mistake!-a fool, of all animals in the creation, is the most difficult to govern.

We set out in the fashionable world with a mutual desire to be as extravagant as possible. Strange, that with this similarity of taste we could never agree!--strange, that this similarity of taste was the cause of our perpetual quarrels! During the first year of our marriage, I had always the upper hand in these disputes, and the last word; and I was content. Stubborn as the brute was, I thought I should in time break him in. From the specimens you have seen, you may guess that I was even then a tolerable proficient in the dear art of _tormenting_. I had almost gained my point, just broken my lord's heart, when one fair morning I unluckily told his man Champfort that he knew no more how to cut hair than a sheep-shearer. Champfort, who is conceit personified, took mortal offence at this; and the devil, who is always at hand to turn anger into malice, put it into Champfort's head to put it into my lord's head, that the world thought--'_My lady governed him_.' My lord took fire. They say the torpedo, the coldest of cold creatures, sometimes gives out a spark--I suppose when electrified with anger. The next time that innocent I insisted upon my Lord Delacour's doing or not doing--I forget which--the most reasonable thing in the world, my lord turns short round, and answers--'My Lady Delacour, I am not a man to be governed by a wife.'--And from that time to this the words, 'I am not a man to be governed by a wife,' have been written in his obstinate face, as all the world who can read the human countenance may see. My dear, I laugh; but even in the midst of laughter there is sadness. But you don't know what it is--I hope you never may--to have an obstinate fool for a bosom friend.