lord's intellects is to me a nightly ceremony; or,"
said her ladyship, looking at her watch and yawning, "I believe I should
say a daily ceremony--six o'clock, I protest!"

The next morning Clarence Hervey called, and Belinda found him a most
uncommonly pleasant young man. Lord Delacour was jealous of him; but
although he would have started with horror at the idea of disturbing the
peace of a family, in that family, he said, there was no peace to
disturb. Consequently, he visited her ladyship every day, and every day
viewed Belinda with increasing admiration, and with increasing dread of
being taken in to marry a niece of that "catch-matchmaker," as Mrs.
Stanhope was known amongst the men of his acquaintance.

Under the guise of a tragic muse--in which character Lady Delacour had
pretended she was going to a masquerade--Belinda heard his true
sentiments with regard to her.

"You don't believe I go to Lady Delacour's to look for a wife? Do you
think I'm an idiot? Do you think I could be taken in by one of the
Stanhope school?" he said to the facetious friends who rallied him on
his attachment. "Do you think I don't see as plainly as any of you that
Belinda Portman is a composition of art and affectation?"

"Melpomene, hast thou forgot thyself to warble?" asked Lady Delacour,
tripping towards them as the comic muse.

"I am not very well," whispered Miss Portman. "Could we get away?"

"Do see if you can find any of my people!" cried Lady Delacour to
Clarence Hervey, who had followed them downstairs.

"Lady Delacour, the comic muse!" exclaimed he. "I had thought----"

"No matter what you thought!" interrupted her ladyship. "Let my carriage
draw up, and put this lady into it!" And he obeyed without uttering a
syllable.

"Dry up your tears, _keep on your mask_, and elbow your way through the
crowd," she said, when she had heard Belinda's story. "If you stop to be
civil and 'hope I don't hurt ye,' you will be trod underfoot."

She insisted on driving to the Pantheon instead of going home, but to
Belinda the night seemed long and dull. The masquerade had no charm to
keep her thoughts from the conversation that had given her so much pain.

_II.--Fashion and Fortitude_

"How happy you are, Lady Delacour!" she said, when they got into the
carriage to go home. "How happy to have such an amazing flow of
spirits!"

And then she learnt the reason of her ladyship's strange unevenness of
temper. She was dying of an in