“If some people had distinguished themselves a little less in the world,” retorted his lordship, “it would have been as well!”
“As well!—how flat!”
“Flatly then I have to inform you, Lady Delacour, that I will neither be contradicted nor laughed at—you understand me,—it would be as well, flat or not flat, my Lady Delacour, if your ladyship would attend more to your own conduct, and less to others!”
“To that of others—his lordship means, if he means any thing. Apropos, Belinda, did not you tell me Clarence Hervey is coming to town?—You have never seen him.—Well, I’ll describe him to you by negatives. He is not a man who ever says any thing flat—he is not a man who must be wound up with half a dozen bottles of champaign before he can go—he is not a man who, when he does go, goes wrong, and won’t be set right—he is not a man, whose whole consequence, if he were married, would depend on his wife—he is not a man, who, if he were married, would be so desperately afraid of being governed by his wife, that he would turn gambler, jockey, or sot, merely to show that he could govern himself.”
“Go on, Lady Delacour,” said his lordship, who had been in vain attempting to balance a spoon on the edge of his teacup during the whole of this speech, which was delivered with the most animated desire to provoke—“Go on, Lady Delacour—all I desire is, that you should go on; Clarence Hervey will be much obliged to you, and I am sure so shall I. Go on, my Lady Delacour—go on, and you’ll oblige me.”
“I never will oblige you, my lord, that you may depend upon,” cried her ladyship, with a look of indignant contempt.
His lordship whistled, rang for his horses, and looked at his nails with a smile. Belinda, shocked and in a great confusion, rose to leave the room, dreading the gross continuance of this matrimonial dialogue.
“Mr. Hervey, my lady,” said a footman, opening the door; and he was scarcely announced, when her ladyship went forward to receive him with an air of easy familiarity.—“Where have you buried yourself, Hervey, this age past?” cried she, shaking hands with him: “there’s absolutely no living in this most stupid of all worlds without you.—Mr. Hervey—Miss Portman—but don’t look as if you were half asleep, man—What are you dreaming of, Clarence? Why looks your grace so heavily to-day?”
“Oh! I have passed a miserable night,” replied Clarence, throwing himself into an actor’s attitude, and speaking in a fine tone of stage declamation.
“What was your dream, my lord? I pray you, tell me,”