Tales and Novels, vol 3 | Page 4

(without
honouring her lord with the smallest portion of her attention)--"Well, I
believe you are right--for certainly you would guess him to be
six-and-sixty, instead of six-and-thirty; but then he can drink more than
any two-legged animal in his majesty's dominions, and you know that
is an advantage which is well worth twenty or thirty years of a man's
life--especially to persons who have no other chance of distinguishing
themselves."
"If some people had distinguished themselves a little less in the world,"
retorted his lordship, "it would have been as well!"
"As well!--how flat!"
"Flatly then I have to inform you, Lady Delacour, that I will neither be
contradicted nor laughed at--you understand me,--it would be as well,
flat or not flat, my Lady Delacour, if your ladyship would attend more
to your own conduct, and less to others!"
"To that of others--his lordship means, if he means any thing. Apropos,
Belinda, did not you tell me Clarence Hervey is coming to town?--You
have never seen him.--Well, I'll describe him to you by negatives. He is
not a man who ever says any thing flat--he is not a man who must he
wound up with half a dozen bottles of champaign before he can go--he
is not a man who, when he does go, goes wrong, and won't be set
right--he is not a man, whose whole consequence, if he were married,
would depend on his wife--he is not a man, who, if he were married,
would be so desperately afraid of being governed by his wife, that he
would turn gambler, jockey, or sot, merely to show that he could
govern himself."
"Go on, Lady Delacour," said his lordship, who had been in vain

attempting to balance a spoon on the edge of his teacup during the
whole of this speech, which was delivered with the most animated
desire to provoke--"Go on, Lady Delacour--all I desire is, that you
should go on; Clarence Hervey will be much obliged to you, and I am
sure so shall I. Go on, my Lady Delacour--go on, and you'll oblige me."
"I never will oblige you, my lord, that you may depend upon," cried her
ladyship, with a look of indignant contempt.
His lordship whistled, rang for his horses, and looked at his nails with a
smile. Belinda, shocked and in a great confusion, rose to leave the
room, dreading the gross continuance of this matrimonial dialogue.
"Mr. Hervey, my lady," said a footman, opening the door; and he was
scarcely announced, when her ladyship went forward to receive him
with an air of easy familiarity.--"Where have you buried yourself,
Hervey, this age past?" cried she, shaking hands with him: "there's
absolutely no living in this most stupid of all worlds without you.--Mr.
Hervey--Miss Portman--but don't look as if you were half asleep,
man--What are you dreaming of, Clarence? Why looks your grace so
heavily to-day?"
"Oh! I have passed a miserable night," replied Clarence, throwing
himself into an actor's attitude, and speaking in a fine tone of stage
declamation.
"What was your dream, my lord? I pray you, tell me,"
said her ladyship in a similar tone.--Clarence went on--
"O Lord, methought what pain it was to dance! What dreadful noise of
fiddles in my ears! What sights of ugly belles within my eyes! ----Then
came wandering by, A shadow like a devil, with red hair, 'Dizen'd with
flowers; and she bawl'd out aloud, Clarence is come; false, fleeting,
perjured Clarence!"
"O, Mrs. Luttridge to the life!" cried Lady Delacour: "I know where
you have been now, and I pity you--but sit down," said she, making

room for him between Belinda and herself upon the sofa, "sit down
here, and tell me what could take you to that odious Mrs. Luttridge's."
Mr. Hervey threw himself on the sofa; Lord Delacour whistled as
before, and left the room without uttering a syllable.
"But my dream has made me forget myself strangely," said Mr. Hervey,
turning to Belinda, and producing her bracelet: "Mrs. Stanhope
promised me that if I delivered it safely, I should be rewarded with the
honour of putting it on the owner's fair arm." A conversation now took
place on the nature of ladies' promises--on fashionable bracelets--on the
size of the arm of the Venus de Medici--on Lady Delacour's and Miss
Portman's--on the thick legs of ancient statues--and on the various
defects and absurdities of Mrs. Luttridge and her wig. On all these
topics Mr. Hervey displayed much wit, gallantry, and satire, with so
happy an effect, that Belinda, when he took leave, was precisely of her
aunt's opinion, that he was a most uncommonly pleasant young man.
Clarence Hervey might have been more than a pleasant young man, if
he had not been smitten with the desire of being thought superior in