“You will not refuse me this quarter of an hour, I am sure,” continued Lord Delacour, “when you hear that, by favouring me with your attention, you may perhaps materially serve an old, or rather a young, friend of yours, and one whom I once fancied was a particular favourite—I mean, Miss Belinda Portman.”
At the name of Belinda Portman, Clarence Hervey became all attention: he assured his lordship that he was in no haste; and all his difficulty now was to moderate the eagerness of his curiosity.
“We can take a turn or two in the park, as well as any where,” said his lordship: “nobody will overhear us, and the sooner you know what I have to say the better.”
“Certainly,” said Clarence.
The most malevolent person upon earth could not have tired poor Clarence’s patience more than good-natured Lord Delacour contrived to do, with the best intentions possible, by his habitual circumlocution.
He descanted at length upon the difficulties, as the world goes, of meeting with a confidential friend, whom it is prudent to trust in any affair that demands delicacy, honour, and address. Men of talents were often, he observed, devoid of integrity, and men of integrity devoid of talents. When he had obtained Hervey’s assent to this proposition, he next paid him sundry handsome, but long-winded compliments: then he complimented himself for having just thought of Mr. Hervey as the fittest person he could apply to: then he congratulated himself upon his good luck in meeting with the very man he was just thinking of. At last, after Clarence had returned thanks for all his kindness, and had given assent to all his lordship’s truisms, the substance of the business came out.
Lord Delacour informed Mr. Hervey, “that he had been lately commissioned, by Lady Delacour, to discover what attractions drew a Mr. Vincent so constantly to Mrs. Luttridge’s——”
Here he was going to explain who Mr. Vincent was; but Clarence assured him that he knew perfectly well that he had been a ward of Mr. Percival’s, that he was a West Indian of large fortune, &c.
“And a lover of Miss Portman’s—that is the most material part of the story to me,” continued Lord Delacour; “for otherwise, you know, Mr. Vincent would be no more to me than any other gentleman. But in that point of view—I mean as a lover of Belinda Portman, and I may say, not quite unlikely to be her husband—he is highly interesting to my Lady Delacour, and to me, and to you, as Miss Portman’s well-wisher, doubtless.”
“Doubtless!” was all Mr. Hervey could reply.