"Yes, ma'am; yes, ma'am, I'll remember; I'll be sure to remember," said Helena, tripping down the steps. But just as she was getting into the carriage she stopped at the sight of the old man, and exclaimed, "Oh, good old man! I must not forget you."

"Yes, indeed, you must, though, my dear Miss Delacour," said Lady Boucher, pulling her into the carriage: "'tis no time to think of good old men now."

"But I must. Dear Miss Portman, will you speak for me? I must pay--I must settle--and I have a great deal to say."

Miss Portman desired the old man to call in Berkley-square at Lady Delacour's; and this satisfying all parties, they drove away.

When they arrived in Berkley-square, Marriott told them that her lady was just gone to lie down. Edward Percival's little journal, which she had been reading, was left on the sofa, and Belinda gave it to Helena, who eagerly began to look over it.

"Thirteen pages! Oh, how good he has been to write so much for me!" said she; and she had almost finished reading it before her mother came into the room.

Lady Delacour shrunk back as her daughter ran towards her; for she recollected too well the agony she had once suffered from an embrace of Helena's. The little girl appeared more grieved than surprised at this; and after kissing her mother's hand, without speaking, she again looked down at the ma.n.u.script.

"Does that engross your attention so entirely, my dear," said Lady Delacour, "that you can neither spare one word nor one look for your mother?"

"Oh, mamma! I only tried to read, because I thought you were angry with me."

"An odd reason for trying to read, my dear!" said Lady Delacour with a smile: "have you any better reason for thinking I was angry with you?"

"Ah, I know you are not angry now, for you smile," said Helena; "but I thought at first that you were, mamma, because you gave me only your hand to kiss."

"Only my hand! The next time, simpleton, I'll give you only my foot to kiss," said her ladyship, sitting down, and holding out her foot playfully.

Her daughter threw aside the book, and kneeling down kissed her foot, saying, in a low voice, "Dear mamma, I never was so happy in my life; for you never looked so very, _very_ kindly at me before."

"Do not judge always of the kindness people feel for you, child, by their looks; and remember that it is _possible_ a person might have felt more than you could guess by their looks. Pray now, Helena, you are such a good judge of physiognomy, should you guess that I was dying, by my looks?"

The little girl laughed, and repeated "Dying? Oh, no, mamma."

"Oh, no! because I have such a fine colour in my cheeks, hey?"

"Not for that reason, mamma," said Helena, withdrawing her eyes from her mother's face.

"What, then you know rouge already when you see it?--You perceive some difference, for instance, between Miss Portman's colour and mine? Upon my word, you are a nice observer. Such nice observers are sometimes dangerous to have near one."

"I hope, mother," said Helena, "that you do not think I would try to find out any thing that you wish, or that I imagined you wished, I should not know."

"I do not understand you, child," cried Lady Delacour, raising herself suddenly upon the sofa, and looking full in her daughter's face.

Helena's colour rose to her temples; but, with a firmness that surprised even Belinda, she repeated what she had said nearly in the same words.

"Do you understand her, Miss Portman?" said Lady Delacour.

"She expresses, I think," said Belinda, "a very honourable sentiment, and one that is easily understood."

"Ay, in general, certainly," said Lady Delacour, checking herself; "but I thought that she meant to allude to something in particular--_that_ was what I did not understand. Undoubtedly, my dear, you have just expressed a very honourable sentiment, and one that I should scarcely have expected from a child of your age.

"Helena, my dear," said her mother, after a silence of some minutes, "did you ever read the Arabian Tales?--'Yes, mamma,' I know must be the answer. But do you remember the story of Zobeide, who carried the porter home with her on condition that, let him hear or see what he might, he would ask no questions?"

"Yes, mamma."

"On the same conditions should you like to stay with me for a few days?"

"Yes. On any conditions, mamma, I should like to stay with you."

"Agreed, then, my dear!" said Lady Delacour. "Now let us go to the gold fishes, and see them eat lemna, or whatever you please to call it."

While they were looking at the gold fishes, the old man, who had been desired by Miss Portman to call, arrived. "Who is this fine, gray-haired old man?" said Lady Delacour. Helena, who did not know the share which Belinda's aunt and her own mother had in the transaction, began with great eagerness to tell the history of the poor gardener, who had been cheated by some fine ladies out of his aloe, &c. She then related how kind Lady Anne Percival and her Aunt Margaret had been to him; that they had gotten him a place as a gardener at Twickenham; and that he had pleased the family to whom he was recommended so much by his good behaviour, that, as they were leaving their house, and obliged to part with him, they had given him all the geraniums and balsams out of the green-house of which he had the care, and these he had been this day selling to the young ladies at Mrs. Dumont's. "I received the money for him, and I was just going to pay him," said Helena, "when Miss Portman came; and that put every thing else out of my head. May I go and give him his money now, mamma?"

"He can wait a few minutes," said Lady Delacour, who had listened to this story with much embarra.s.sment and impatience. "Before you go, Helena, favour us with the names of _the fine ladies who cheated_ this old gardener out of his aloe."

"Indeed, mamma, I don't know their names."

"No!--Did you never ask Lady Anne Percival, or your aunt Margaret?--Look in my face, child! Did they never inform you?"

"No, ma'am, never. I once asked Lady Anne, and she said that she did not choose to tell me; that it would be of no use to me to know."

"I give Lady Anne Percival more credit and more thanks for this," cried Lady Delacour, "than for all the rest. I see she has not attempted to lower me in my child's opinion. I am the fine lady, Helena--I was the cause of his being cheated--I was intent upon _the n.o.ble end_ of outshining a certain Mrs. Luttridge--the _n.o.ble means_ I left to others, and the means have proved worthy of the end. I deserve to be brought to shame for my folly; yet my being ashamed will do n.o.body any good but myself. Rest.i.tution is in these cases the best proof of repentance. Go, Helena, my love! settle your little affairs with this old man, and bid him call here again to-morrow. I will see what we can do for him."

Lord Delacour had this very morning sent home to her ladyship a handsome diamond ring, which had been intended as a present for Mrs. Luttridge, and which he imagined would therefore be peculiarly acceptable to his lady. In the evening, when his lordship asked her how she liked the ring, which he desired the jeweller to leave for her to look at it, she answered, that it was a handsome ring, but that she hoped he had not purchased it for her.

"It is not actually bought, my dear," said his lordship; "but if it suits your fancy, I hope you will do me the honour to wear it for my sake."

"I will wear it for your sake, my lord," said Lady Delacour, "if you desire it; and as a mark of your regard it is agreeable: but as to the rest--

'My taste for diamonds now is o'er, The sparkling baubles please no more.'

If you wish to do me a kindness, I will tell you what I should like much better than diamonds, though I know it is rather ungracious to dictate the form and fashion of a favour. But as my dictatorship in all human probability cannot last much longer--"

"Oh, my dear Lady Delacour! I must not hear you talk in this manner: your dictatorship, as you call it, will I hope last many, many happy years. But to the point--what should you like better, my dear, than this foolish ring?"

Her ladyship then expressed her wish that a small annuity might be settled upon a poor old man, whom she said she had unwittingly injured.

She told the story of the rival galas and the aloe, and concluded by observing, that her lord was in some measure called upon to remedy part of the unnumbered ills which had sprung from her hatred of Mrs.

Luttridge, as he had originally been the cause of her unextinguishable ire. Lord Delacour was flattered by this hint, and the annuity was immediately promised to the old gardener.

In talking to this old man afterward, Lady Delacour found, that the family in whose service he lately lived had a house at Twickenham that would just answer her purpose. Lord Delacour's inquiries had hitherto been unsuccessful; he was rejoiced to find what he wanted just as he was giving up the search. The house was taken, and the old man hired as gardener--a circ.u.mstance which seemed to give him almost as much pleasure as the annuity; for there was a morello cherry-tree in the garden which had succeeded the aloe in his affection: "it would have grieved him sorely," he said, "to leave his favourite tree to strangers, after all the pains he had been at _in netting_ it to keep off the birds."

As the period approached when her fate was to be decided, Lady Delacour's courage seemed to rise; and at the same time her anxiety, that her secret should not be discovered, appeared to increase.

"If I survive _this business_," said she, "it is my firm intention to appear in a new character, or rather to a.s.sert my real character. I will break through the spell of dissipation--I will at once cast off all the acquaintance that are unworthy of me--I will, in one word, go with you, my dear Belinda, to Mr. Percival's. I can bear to be mortified for my good; and I am willing, since I find that Lady Anne Percival has behaved generously to me, with regard to Helena's affections, I am willing that the recovery of my moral health should be attributed to the salubrious air of Oakly-park. But it would be inexpressible, intolerable mortification to me, to have it said or suspected in the world of fashion, that I retreated from the ranks disabled instead of disgusted.

A voluntary retirement is graceful and dignified; a forced retreat is awkward and humiliating. You must be sensible that I could not endure to have it whispered--'Lady Delacour now sets up for being a prude, because she can no longer be a coquette.' Lady Delacour would become the subject of witticisms, epigrams, caricatures without end. It would just be the very thing for Mrs. Luttridge; then she would revenge herself without mercy for _the a.s.s and her panniers_. We should have 'Lord and Lady D----, or the Domestic Tete-a-tete,' or 'The Reformed Amazon,' stuck up in a print-shop window! Oh, my dear, think of seeing such a thing! I should die with vexation; and of all deaths, that is the death I should like the least."

Though Belinda could not entirely enter into those feelings, which thus made Lady Delacour invent wit against herself, and antic.i.p.ate caricatures; yet she did every thing in her power to calm her ladyship's apprehension of a discovery.

"My dear," said Lady Delacour, "I have perfect confidence in Lord Delacour's promise, and in his good-nature, of which he has within these few days given me proofs that are not lost upon my heart; but he is not the most discreet man in the world. Whenever he is anxious about any thing, you may read it a mile off in his eyes, nose, mouth, and chin.

And to tell you all my fears in one word, Marriott informed me this morning, that _the Luttridge_, who came from Harrowgate to Rantipole, to meet Lord Delacour, finding that there was no drawing him to her, has actually brought herself to town.

"To town!--At this strange time of year! How will my lord resist this unequivocal, unprecedented proof of pa.s.sion? If she catch hold of him again, I am undone. Or, even suppose him firm as a rock, her surprise, her jealousy, her curiosity, will set all engines at work, to find out by what witchcraft I have taken my husband from her. Every precaution that prudence could devise against her malicious curiosity I have taken.

Marriott, you know, is above all temptation. That vile wretch (naming the person whose quack medicines had nearly destroyed her), that vile wretch will be silent from fear, for his own sake. He is yet to be paid and dismissed. That should have been done long ago, but I had not money both for him and Mrs. Franks the milliner. She is now paid: and Lord Delacour--I am glad to tell his friend how well he deserves her good opinion--Lord Delacour in the handsomest manner supplied me with the means of satisfying this man. He is to be here at three o'clock to-day; and this is the last interview he will ever have with Lady Delacour in _the mysterious boudoir_."