“No,” said Lady Delacour: “I tell you, my dear, that I cannot depend upon any of these ‘honourable men.’ I have taken means to satisfy myself on this point: their honour and foolish delicacy would not allow them to perform such an operation for a wife, without the knowledge, privity, consent, &c. &c. &c. of her husband. Now Lord Delacour’s knowing the thing is quite out of the question.”
“Why, my dear Lady Delacour, why?” said Belinda, with great earnestness. “Surely a husband has the strongest claim to be consulted upon such an occasion! Let me entreat you to tell Lord Delacour your intention, and then all will be right. Say Yes, my dear friend! let me prevail upon you,” said Belinda, taking her ladyship’s hand, and pressing it between both of hers with the most affectionate eagerness.
Lady Delacour made no answer, but fixed her eyes upon Belinda’s.
“Lord Delacour,” continued Miss Portman, “deserves this from you, by the great interest, the increasing interest, that he has shown of late about your health: his kindness and handsome conduct the other morning certainly pleased you, and you have now an opportunity of showing that confidence in him, which his affection and constant attachment to you merit.”
“I trouble myself very little about the constancy of Lord Delacour’s attachment to me,” said her ladyship coolly, withdrawing her hand from Belinda; “whether his lordship’s affection for me has of late increased or diminished, is an object of perfect indifference to me. But if I were inclined to reward him for his late attentions, I should apprehend that we might hit upon some better reward than you have pitched upon. Unless you imagine that Lord Delacour has a peculiar taste for surgical operations, I cannot conceive how his becoming my confidant upon this occasion could have an immediate tendency to increase his affection for me—about which affection I don’t care a straw, as you, better than any one else, must know; for I am no hypocrite. I have laid open my whole heart to you, Belinda.”
“For that very reason,” said Miss Portman, “I am eager to use the influence which I know I have in your heart for your happiness. I am convinced that it will be absolutely impossible that you should carry on this scheme in the house with your husband without its being discovered. If he discover it by accident, he will feel very differently from what he would do if he were trusted by you.”
“For Heaven’s sake, my dear,” cried Lady Delacour, “let me hear no more about Lord Delacour’s feelings.”
“But allow me then to speak of my own,” said Belinda: “I cannot be concerned in this affair, if it is to be concealed from your husband.”
“You will do about that as you think proper,” said Lady Delacour haughtily. “Your sense of propriety towards Lord Delacour is, I observe, stronger than your sense of honour towards me. But I make no doubt that you act upon principle—just principle. You promised never to abandon me; but when I most want your assistance, you refuse it, from consideration for Lord Delacour. A scruple of delicacy absolves a person of nice feelings, I find, from a positive promise—a new and convenient code of morality!”
Belinda, though much hurt by the sarcastic tone in which her ladyship spoke, mildly answered, that the promise she had made to stay with her ladyship during her illness was very different from an engagement to assist her in such a scheme as she had now in contemplation.