was
just equipped as a serpent, his rays set fire to part of his envelope, and it
was with the greatest difficulty that he was extricated. He escaped
unhurt, but his serpent's skin was utterly consumed; nothing remained
but the melancholy spectacle of its skeleton. He was obliged to give up
the hopes of shining at the masquerade, but he resolved to be at Lady
Singleton's that he might meet Lady Delacour and Miss Portman. The
moment that the tragic and comic muse appeared, he invoked them
with much humour and mock pathos, declaring that he knew not which
of them could best sing his adventure. After a recital of his misfortune
had entertained the company, and after the muses had performed their
parts to the satisfaction of the audience and their own, the conversation
ceased to be supported in masquerade character; muses and harlequins,
gipsies and Cleopatras, began to talk of their private affairs, and of the
news and the scandal of the day.
A group of gentlemen, amongst whom was Clarence Hervey, gathered
round the tragic muse; as Mr. Hervey had hinted that he knew she was
a person of distinction, though he would not tell her name. After he had
exercised his wit for some time, without obtaining from the tragic muse
one single syllable, he whispered, "Lady Delacour, why this unnatural
reserve? Do you imagine that, through this tragical disguise, I have not
found you out?"
The tragic muse, apparently absorbed in meditation, vouchsafed no
reply.
"The devil a word can you get for your pains, Hervey," said a
gentleman of his acquaintance, who joined the party at this instant.
"Why didn't you stick to t'other muse, who, to do her justice, is as
arrant a flirt as your heart could wish for?"
"There's danger in flirting," said Clarence, "with an arrant flirt of Mrs.
Stanhope's training. There's a kind of electricity about that girl. I have a
sort of cobweb feeling, an imaginary net coming all over me."
"Fore-warned is fore-armed," replied his companion: "a man must be a
novice indeed that could be taken in at this time of day by a niece of
Mrs. Stanhope's."
"That Mrs. Stanhope must be a good clever dame, faith," said a third
gentleman: "there's no less than six of her nieces whom she has got off
within these four winters--not one of 'em now that has not made a
catch-match.--There's the eldest of the set, Mrs. Tollemache, what had
she, in the devil's name, to set up with in the world but a pair of good
eyes?--her aunt, to be sure, taught her the use of them early enough:
they might have rolled to all eternity before they would have rolled me
out of my senses; but you see they did Tollemache's business. However,
they are going to part now, I hear: Tollemache was tired of her before
the honey-moon was over, as I foretold. Then there's the musical girl.
Joddrell, who has no more ear than a post, went and married her,
because he had a mind to set up for a connoisseur in music; and Mrs.
Stanhope flattered him that he was one."
The gentlemen joined in the general laugh: the tragic muse sighed.
"Even were she at the School for Scandal, the tragic muse dare not
laugh, except behind her mask," said Clarence Hervey.
"Far be it from her to laugh at those follies which she must for ever
deplore!" said Belinda, in a feigned voice.--"What miseries spring from
these ill-suited marriages! The victims are sacrificed before they have
sense enough to avoid their fate."
Clarence Hervey imagined that this speech alluded to Lady Delacour's
own marriage.
"Damn me if I know any woman, young or old, that would avoid being
married, if she could, though," cried Sir Philip Baddely, a gentleman
who always supplied "each vacuity of sense" with an oath: "but,
Rochfort, didn't Valleton marry one of these nieces?"
"Yes: she was a mighty fine dancer, and had good legs enough: Mrs.
Stanhope got poor Valleton to fight a duel about her place in a country
dance, and then he was so pleased with himself for his prowess, that he
married the girl."
Belinda made an effort to change her seat, but she was encompassed so
that she could not retreat.
"As to Jenny Mason, the fifth of the nieces," continued the witty
gentleman, "she was as brown as mahogany, and had neither eyes, nose,
mouth, nor legs: what Mrs. Stanhope could do with her I often
wondered; but she took courage, rouged her up, set her a going as a
dasher, and she dashed herself into Tom Levit's curricle, and Tom
couldn't get her out again till she was the honourable Mrs. Levit: she
then took the reins into her own hands, and
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