“You transport me with joy! I will not keep you from her a second. But stay—I am sorry to tell you, that, as she informed me this morning, her heart is not at present inclined to love. And here is Mrs. Margaret Delacour, poor wretch, in this room, dying with curiosity. Curiosity is as ardent as love, and has as good a claim to compassion.”
As he entered the room, where there were only Mrs. Margaret Delacour and Belinda, Clarence Hervey’s first glance, rapid as it was, explained his heart.
Belinda put her arm within Lady Delacour’s, trembling so that she could scarcely stand. Lady Delacour pressed her hand, and was perfectly silent.
“And what is Miss Portman to believe,” cried Mrs. Margaret Delacour, “when she has seen you on the very eve of marriage with another lady?”
“The strongest merit I can plead with such a woman as Miss Portman is, that I was ready to sacrifice my own happiness to a sense of duty. Now that I am at liberty——”
“Now that you are at liberty,” interrupted Lady Delacour, “you are in a vast hurry to offer your whole soul to a lady, who has for months seen all your merits with perfect insensibility, and who has been, notwithstanding all my operations, stone blind to your love.”
“The struggles of my passion cannot totally have escaped Belinda’s penetration,” said Clarence; “but I like her a thousand times the better for not having trusted merely to appearances. That love is most to be valued which cannot be easily won. In my opinion there is a prodigious difference between a warm imagination and a warm heart.”
“Well,” said Lady Delacour, “we have all of us seen Pamela maritata—let us now see Belinda in love, if that be possible. If! forgive me this last stroke, my dear—in spite of all my raillery, I do believe that the prudent Belinda is more capable of feeling real permanent passion than any of the dear sentimental young ladies, whose motto is
‘All for love, or the world well lost.’”
“That is just my opinion,” said Mrs. Margaret Delacour.