“Married! married!” cried Lady Delacour.
“Ay, ay, your ladyship may look as much astonished as you please, you cannot be more so than I was when I heard it. Clarence Hervey, Miss Portman, that was looked upon so completely, you know, as not a marrying man; and now the last man upon earth that your ladyship would suspect of marrying in this sort of way!”
“In what sort of way?—My dear Belinda, how can you stand this fire?” said Lady Delacour, placing a skreen, dexterously, to hide her face from the dowager’s observation.
“Now only guess whom he is going to marry,” continued Lady Boucher: “whom do you guess, Miss Portman?”
“An amiable woman, I should guess, from Mr. Hervey’s general character,” cried Lady Delacour.
“Oh, an amiable woman, I take for granted; every woman is amiable of course, as the newspapers tell us, when she is going to be married,” said the dowager: “an amiable woman, to be sure; but that means nothing. I have not had a guess from Miss Portman.”
“From general character,” Belinda began, in a constrained voice.
“Do not guess from general character, my dear Belinda,” interrupted Lady Delacour; “for there is no judging, in these cases, from general character, of what people will like or dislike.”
“Then I will leave it to your ladyship to guess this time, if you please,” said Belinda.
“You will neither of you guess till doomsday!” cried the dowager; “I must tell you. Mr. Hervey’s going to marry—in the strangest sort of way!—a girl that nobody knows—a daughter of a Mr. Hartley. The father can give her a good fortune, it is true; but one should not have supposed that fortune was an object with Mr. Hervey, who has such a noble one of his own. It’s really difficult to believe it.”