rd Delacour wished to enter the locked
cabinet for _arque-busade._ On being denied entrance, he seized the key,
believing a lover of hers was concealed there, until Belinda sprang
forward and took it from him, leaving them to believe what they would.

This circumstance was afterwards explained by Dr. X----, a mutual
friend, and Hervey was so much charmed with Belinda that he would have
gone to her at once--only that he had undertaken the reformation of Lady
Delacour.

_III.--An Unexpected Suitor_

In the meantime, after spending a morning in tasting wines, and thinking
that, although he had never learned to swim, some recollection he had of
an essay on swimming would ensure his safety, he betted his friends a
hundred guineas that he would swim to a certain point, and flinging
himself into the Serpentine, would have drowned before their eyes but
for the help of Mr. Percival. The breach caused by this affair induced
Sir Philip Baddely, a gentleman who always supplied "each vacuity of
sense" with an oath, to endeavour to cut him out by proposing to
Belinda.

"Damme, you're ten times handsomer than the finest woman I ever saw,
for, damme, I didn't know what it was to be in love then," he said,
heaving an audible sigh. "I'll trouble you for Mrs. Stanhope's
direction, Miss Portman; I believe, to do the thing in style, I ought to
write to her before I speak to you."

Belinda looked at him in astonishment, and then, finding he was in
earnest, assured him it was not in her power to encourage his addresses,
although she was fully sensible of the honour he had done her.

"Confusion seize me!" cried he, starting up, "if it isn't the most
extraordinary thing I ever heard! Is it to Sir Philip Baddely's
fortune--L15,000 a year--you object, or to his family, or to his person?
Oh, curse it!" said he, changing his tone, "you're only quizzing me to
see how I should look--you do it too well, you little coquette!"

Belinda again assured him she was entirely in earnest, and that she was
incapable of the sort of coquetry which he ascribed to her. To punish
her for this rejection he spread the report of Hervey's entanglement
with a beautiful girl named Virginia, whose picture he had sent to an
exhibition. He also roused Lady Delacour's jealousy into the belief that
Belinda meant to marry her husband, the viscount, after her death.

In her efforts to bring husband and wife together, Belinda had forgotten
that jealousy could exist w