“Time! O yes, give me time,” cried Virginia, shrinking back.
“My dear Miss Hartley,” continued Lady Delacour, “in plain prose, to prevent all difficulties and embarrassments, I must inform you, that Captain Sunderland will not insist upon prompt payment of your father’s debt of gratitude: he has but one quarter of an hour to spend with us—he is actually under sailing orders; so that you will have time to compose your mind before his return. Clarence, I advise you to accompany Captain Sunderland on this cruise; don’t you, Belinda?
“And now, my good friends,” continued Lady Delacour, “shall I finish the novel for you?”
“If your ladyship pleases; nobody can do it better,” said Clarence Hervey.
“But I hope you will remember, dear Lady Delacour,” said Belinda, “that there is nothing in which novelists are so apt to err as in hurrying things toward the conclusion: in not allowing time enough for that change of feeling, which change of situation cannot instantly produce.”
“That’s right, my dear Belinda; true to your principles to the last gasp. Fear nothing—you shall have time enough to become accustomed to Clarence. Would you choose that I should draw out the story to five volumes more? With your advice and assistance, I can with the greatest ease, my dear. A declaration of love, you know, is only the beginning of things; there may be blushes, and sighs, and doubts, and fears, and misunderstandings, and jealousies without end or common sense, to fill up the necessary space, and to gain the necessary time; but if I might conclude the business in two lines, I should say,
‘Ye gods, annihilate both space and time,
And make four lovers happy.’”
“Oh, that would be cutting matters too short,” said Mrs. Margaret Delacour. “I am of the old school; and though I could dispense with the description of Miss Harriot Byron’s worked chairs and fine china, yet I own I like to hear something of the preparation for a marriage, as well as of the mere wedding. I like to hear how people become happy in a rational manner, better than to be told in the huddled style of an old fairy tale—and so they were all married, and they lived very happily all the rest of their days.”
“We are not in much danger of hearing such an account of modern marriages,” said Lady Delacour. “But how shall I please you all?—Some people cry, ‘Tell me every thing;’ others say, that,
‘Le secret d’ennuyer est celui de tout dire.’”