"My belief in the reconciling power of custom does not go quite so far,"

said Lady Anne. "It does not extend to Caliban, or even to the hero of La Belle et La Bete; but I do believe, that, in a mind so well regulated as yours, esteem may certainly in time be improved into love. I will tell Mr. Vincent so, my dear."

"No, my dear Lady Anne! no; you must not--indeed you must not. You have too good an opinion of me--my mind is not so well regulated--I am much weaker, much sillier, than you imagine--than you can conceive," said Belinda.

Lady Anne soothed her with the most affectionate expressions, and concluded with saying, "Mr. Vincent has promised not to return from Harrowgate, to torment you with his addresses, if you be absolutely determined against him. He is of too generous, and perhaps too proud a temper, to persecute you with vain solicitations; and however Mr.

Percival and I may wish that he could obtain such a wife, we shall have the common, or uncommon, sense and good-nature to allow our friends to be happy their own way."

"You are very good--too good. But am I then to be the cause of banishing Mr. Vincent from all his friends--from Oakly-park?"

"Will he not do what is most prudent, to avoid the charming Miss Portman," said Lady Anne, smiling, "if he must not love her? This was at least the advice I gave him, when he consulted us yesterday evening.

But I will not sign his writ of banishment lightly. Nothing but the a.s.surance that the heart is engaged can be a sufficient cause for despair; nothing else could, in my eyes, justify you, my dear Belinda, from the charge of caprice."

"I can give you no such a.s.surance, I hope--I believe," said Belinda, in great confusion; "and yet I would not for the world deceive you: you have a right to my sincerity." She paused; and Lady Anne said with a smile, "Perhaps I can spare you the trouble of telling me in words what a blush told me, or at least made me suspect, yesterday evening, when we were standing by the river side, when little Charles asked you--"

"Yes, I remember--I saw you look at me."

"Undesignedly, believe me."

"Undesignedly, I am sure; but I was afraid you would think--"

"The truth."

"No; but more than the truth. The truth you shall hear; and the rest I will leave to your judgment and to your kindness."

Belinda gave a full account of her acquaintance with Clarence Hervey; of the variations in his manner towards her; of his excellent conduct with respect to Lady Delacour (of this, by-the-by, she spoke at large). But she was more concise when she touched upon the state of her own heart; and her voice almost failed when she came to the history of the lock of beautiful hair, the Windsor incognita, and the picture of Virginia. She concluded by expressing her conviction of the propriety of forgetting a man, who was in all probability attached to another, and she declared it to be her resolution to banish him from her thoughts. Lady Anne said, "that nothing could be more prudent or praiseworthy than forming such a resolution--except keeping it." Lady Anne had a high opinion of Mr.

Hervey; but she had no doubt, from Belinda's account, and from her own observations on Mr. Hervey, and from slight circ.u.mstances which had accidentally come to Mr. Percival's knowledge, that he was, as Belinda suspected, attached to another person. She wished, therefore, to confirm Miss Portman in this belief, and to turn her thoughts towards one who, beside being deserving of her esteem and love, felt for her the most sincere affection. She did not, however, press the subject farther at this time, but contented herself with requesting that Belinda would take three days (the usual time given for deliberation in fairy tales) before she should decide against Mr. Vincent.

The next day they went to look at a porter's lodge, which Mr. Percival had just built; it was inhabited by an old man and woman, who had for many years been industrious tenants, but who, in their old age, had been reduced to poverty, not by imprudence, but by misfortune. Lady Anne was pleased to see them comfortably settled in their new habitation; and whilst she and Belinda were talking to the old couple, their grand-daughter, a pretty looking girl of about eighteen, came in with a basket of eggs in her hand. "Well, Lucy," said Lady Anne, "have you overcome your dislike to James Jackson?" The girl reddened, smiled, and looked at her grand-mother, who answered for her in an arch tone, "Oh, yes, my lady! We are not afraid of Jackson _now_; we are grown very great friends. This pretty cane chair for my good man was his handiwork, and these baskets he made for me. Indeed, he's a most industrious, ingenious, good-natured youth; and our Lucy takes no offence at his courting her now, my lady, I can a.s.sure you. That necklace, which is never off her neck now, he turned for her, my lady; it is a present of his. So I tell him he need not be discouraged, though so be she did not take to him at the first; for she's a good girl, and a sensible girl--I say it, though she's my own; and the eyes are used to a face after a time, and then it's nothing. They say, fancy's all in all in love: now in my judgment, fancy's little or nothing with girls that have sense.

But I beg pardon for prating at this rate, more especially when I am so old as to have forgot all the little I ever knew about such things."

"But you have the best right in the world to speak about such things, and your grand-daughter has the best reason in the world to listen to you," said Lady Anne, "because, in spite of all the crosses of fortune, you have been an excellent and happy wife, at least ever since I can remember."

"And ever since I can remember, that's more; no offence to your ladyship," said the old man, striking his crutch against the ground.

"Ever since I can remember, she has made me the happiest man in the whole world, in the whole parish, as every body knows, and I best of all!" cried he, with a degree of enthusiasm that lighted up his aged countenance, and animated his feeble voice.

"And yet," said the honest dame, "if I had followed my fancy, and taken up with my first love, it would not ha' been with _he_, Lucy. I had a sort of a fancy (since my lady's so good as to let me speak), I had a sort of a fancy for an idle young man; but he, very luckily for me, took it into his head to fall in love with another young woman, and then I had leisure enough left me to think of your grandfather, who was not so much to my taste like at first. But when I found out his goodness and cleverness, and joined to all, his great tenderness for me, I thought better of it, Lucy (as who knows but you may do, though there shall not be a word said on my part to press you, for poor Jackson?); and my thinking better is the cause why I have been so happy ever since, and am so still in my old age. Ah, Lucy! dear, what a many years that same old age lasts, after all! But young folks, for the most part, never think what's to come after thirty or forty at farthest. But I don't say this for you, Lucy; for you are a good girl, and a sensible girl, though my own grand-daughter, as I said before, and therefore won't be run away with by fancy, which is soon past and gone: but make a prudent choice, that you won't never have cause to repent of. But I'll not say a word more; I'll leave it all to yourself and James Jackson."

"You do right," said Lady Anne: "good morning to you! Farewell, Lucy!

That's a pretty necklace, and is very becoming to you--fare ye well!"

She hurried out of the cottage with Belinda, apprehensive that the talkative old dame might weaken the effect of her good sense and experience by a farther profusion of words.

"One would think," said Belinda, with an ingenuous smile, "that this lesson upon the dangers of _fancy_ was intended for me: at any rate, I may turn it to my own advantage!"

"Happy those who can turn all the experience of others to their own advantage!" said Lady Anne: "this would be a more valuable privilege than the power of turning every thing that is touched to gold."

They walked on in silence for a few minutes; and then Miss Portman, pursuing the train of her own thoughts, and unconscious that she had not explained them to Lady Anne, abruptly exclaimed, "But if I should be entangled, so as not to be able to retract!--and if it should not be in my power to love him at last, he will think me a coquette, a jilt, perhaps: he will have reason to complain of me, if I waste his time, and trifle with his affections. Then is it not better that I should avoid, by a decided refusal, all possibility of injury to Mr. Vincent, and of blame to myself?"

"There is no danger of Mr. Vincent's misunderstanding or misrepresenting you. The risk that he runs is by his voluntary choice; and I am sure that if, after farther acquaintance with him, you find it impossible to return his affection, he will not consider himself as ill-used by your refusal."

"But after a certain time--after the world suspects that two people are engaged to each other, it is scarcely possible for the woman to recede: when they come within a certain distance, they are pressed to unite, by the irresistible force of external circ.u.mstances. A woman is too often reduced to this dilemma: either she must marry a man she does not love, or she must be blamed by the world--either she must sacrifice a portion of her reputation, or the whole of her happiness."

"The world is indeed often too curious, and too rash in these affairs,"

said Lady Anne. "A young woman is not in this respect allowed sufficient time for freedom of deliberation. She sees, as Mr. Percival once said, 'the drawn sword of tyrant custom suspended over her head by a single hair.'"

"And yet, notwithstanding you are so well aware of the danger, your ladyship would expose me to it?" said Belinda.

"Yes; for I think the chance of happiness, in this instance, overbalances the risk," said Lady Anne. "As we cannot alter the common law of custom, and as we cannot render the world less gossiping, or less censorious, we must not expect always to avoid censure; all we can do is, never to deserve it--and it would be absurd to enslave ourselves to the opinion of the idle and ignorant. To a certain point, respect for the opinion of the world is prudence; beyond that point, it is weakness.

You should also consider that the _world_ at Oakly-park and in London are two different worlds. In London if you and Mr. Vincent were seen often in each other's company, it would be immediately buzzed about that Miss Portman and Mr. Vincent were going to be married; and if the match did not take place, a thousand foolish stories might be told to account for its being broken off. But here you are not surrounded by busy eyes and busy tongues. The butchers, bakers, ploughmen, and spinsters, who compose our world, have all affairs of their own to mind. Besides, their comments can have no very extensive circulation; they are used to see Mr. Vincent continually here; and his staying with us the remainder of the autumn will not appear to them any thing wonderful or portentous."

Their conversation was interrupted. Mr. Vincent returned to Oakly-park--but upon the express condition that he should not make his attachment public by any particular attentions, and that he should draw no conclusions in his favour from Belinda's consenting to converse with him freely upon every common subject. To this treaty of amity Lady Anne Percival was guarantee.

CHAPTER XIX.

A WEDDING.

Belinda and Mr. Vincent could never agree in their definition of the-word _flattery_; so that there were continual complaints on the one hand of a breach of treaty, and, on the other, solemn protestations of the most scrupulous adherence to his compact. However this might be, it is certain that the gentleman gained so much, either by truth or fiction, that, in the course of some weeks, he got the lady as far as "grat.i.tude and esteem."

One evening, Belinda was playing with little Charles Percival at spillikins. Mr. Vincent, who found pleasure in every thing that amused Belinda, and Mr. Percival, who took an interest in every thing which entertained his children, were looking on at this simple game.

"Mr. Percival," said Belinda, "condescending to look at a game of jack-straws!"

"Yes," said Lady Anne; "for he is of Dryden's opinion, that, if a straw can be made the instrument of happiness, he is a wise man who does not despise it."

"Ah! Miss Portman, take care!" cried Charles, who was anxious that she should win, though he was playing against her. "Take care! don't touch that knave."

"I would lay a hundred guineas upon the steadiness of Miss Portman's hand," cried Mr. Vincent.

"I'll lay you sixpence, though," cried Charles, eagerly, "that she'll stir the king, if she touches that knave--I'll lay you a shilling."

"Done! done!" cried Mr. Vincent.

"Done! done!" cried the boy, stretching out his hand, but his father caught it.

"Softly! softly, Charles!--No betting, if you please, my dear. Done and done sometimes ends in--undone."

"It was my fault--it was I who was in the wrong," cried Vincent immediately.

"I am sure you are in the right, now," said Mr. Percival; "and, what is better than my saying so, Miss Portman thinks so, as her smile tells me."

"You moved, Miss Portman!" cried Charles:--"Oh, indeed! the king's head stirred, the very instant papa spoke. I knew it was impossible that you could get that knave clear off without shaking the king. Now, papa, only look how they were balanced."

"I grant you," said Mr. Vincent, "I should have made an imprudent bet.

So it is well I made none; for now I see the chances were ten to one, twenty to one, a hundred to one against me."