“I beg, I request, I conjure you not to read it!” cried Miss Portman, clasping her hands. “Read mine, read mine, if you must, but don’t read my aunt Stanhope’s—Oh! I beg, I entreat, I conjure you!” and she threw herself upon her knees.
“You beg! you entreat! you conjure! Why, this is like the Duchess de Brinvilliers, who wrote on her paper of poisons, ‘Whoever finds this, I entreat, I conjure them, in the name of more saints than I can remember, not to open the paper any farther.’—What a simpleton, to know so little of the nature of curiosity!”
As she spoke, Lady Delacour opened Mrs. Stanhope’s letter, read it from beginning to end, folded it up coolly when she had finished it, and simply said, “The person alluded to is almost as bad as her name at full length: does Mrs. Stanhope think no one can make out an inuendo in a libel, or fill up a blank, but an attorney-general?” pointing to a blank in Mrs. Stanhope’s letter, left for the name of Clarence Hervey.
Belinda was in too much confusion either to speak or think.
“You were right to swear they were not love-letters,” pursued her ladyship, laying down the papers. “I protest I snatched them by way of frolic—I beg pardon. All I can do now is not to read the rest.”
“Nay—I beg—I wish—I insist upon your reading mine,” said Belinda.
When Lady Delacour had read it, her countenance suddenly changed—“Worth a hundred of your aunt’s, I declare,” said she, patting Belinda’s cheek. “What a treasure to meet with any thing like a new heart!—all hearts, now-a-days, are second-hand, at best.”
Lady Delacour spoke with a tone of feeling which Belinda had never heard from her before, and which at this moment touched her so much, that she took her ladyship’s hand and kissed it.