“Surely prudence, not courage, is the virtue of our sex; and seriously, my dear Lady Delacour, I entreat you not to use your influence over my mind, lest you should lessen my happiness, though you cannot alter my determination.”
Moved by the earnest manner in which Belinda uttered these words, Lady Delacour rallied her no more, nor did she longer oppose her resolution of returning immediately to Oakly-park.
“May I remind you,” said Miss Portman, “though it is seldom either politic or polite, to remind people of their promises,—but may I remind you of something like a promise you made, to accompany me to Mr. Percival’s?”
“And would you have me behave so brutally to poor Lord Delacour, as to run away from him in this manner the moment I have strength to run?”
“Lord Delacour is included in this invitation,” said Miss Portman, putting the last letter that she had received from Lady Anne Percival into her hands.
“When I recollect,” said Lady Delacour, as she looked over the letter, “how well this Lady Anne of yours has behaved to me about Helena, when I recollect, that, though you have been with her so long, she has not supplanted me in your affections, and that she did not attempt to detain you when I sent Marriott to Oakly-park, and when I consider how much for my own advantage it will be to accept this invitation, I really cannot bring myself, from pride, or folly, or any other motive, to refuse it. So, my dear Belinda, prevail upon Lord Delacour to spend his Christmas at Oakly-park, instead of at Studley-manor (Rantipole, thank Heaven! is out of the question), and prevail upon yourself to stay a few days for me, and you shall take us all with you in triumph.”
Belinda was convinced that, when Lady Delacour had once tasted the pleasures of domestic life, she would not easily return to that dissipation which she had followed from habit, and into which she had first been driven by a mixture of vanity and despair. All the connexions which she had imprudently formed with numbers of fashionable but extravagant and thoughtless women would insensibly be broken off by this measure; for Lady Delacour, who was already weary of their company, would be so much struck with the difference between their insipid conversation and the animated and interesting society in Lady Anne Percival’s family, that she would afterwards think them not only burdensome but intolerable. Lord Delacour’s intimacy with Lord Studley was one of his chief inducements to that intemperance, which injured almost equally his constitution and his understanding: for some weeks past he had abstained from all excess, and Belinda was well aware, that, when the immediate motive of humanity to Lady Delacour ceased to act upon him, he would probably return to his former habits, if he continued to visit his former associates. It was therefore of importance to break at once his connexion with Lord Studley, and to place him in a situation where he might form new habits, and where his dormant talents might be roused to exertion. She was convinced that his understanding was not so much below par as she had once been taught to think it: she perceived, also, that since their reconciliation, Lady Delacour was anxious to make him appear to advantage: whenever he said any thing that was worth hearing, she looked at Belinda with triumph; and whenever he happened to make a mistake in conversation, she either showed involuntary signs of uneasiness, or passed it off with that easy wit, by which she generally knew how “to make the worse appear the better reason.” Miss Portman knew that Mr. Percival possessed the happy talent of drawing out all the abilities of those with whom he conversed, and that he did not value men merely for their erudition, science, or literature; he was capable of estimating the potential as well as the actual range of the mind. Of his generosity she could not doubt, and she was persuaded that he would take every possible means which good nature, joined to good sense, could suggest, to raise Lord Delacour in his lady’s esteem, and to make that union happy which was indissoluble. All these reflections passed with the utmost rapidity in Belinda’s mind, and the result of them was, that she consented to wait Lady Delacour’s leisure for her journey.