ken it sooner!" said Lady Delacour. "I have revealed to Lord Delacour
my real situation. Poor man, he was shocked beyond expression. The
moment his foolish jealousy was extinguished, his love for me revived in
full."

Lady Delacour awaited the operation with the utmost fortitude; but, to
everyone's joy, it was found there was no necessity for it; she had been
deceived by a villainous quack, who knew too well how to make a wound
hideous and painful, and had continued her delusion for his own
advantage.

Meanwhile, Belinda having permitted Mr. Vincent to address her, he was
being given a fair trial whether he could win her love. They had heard
reports of Clarence Hervey's speedy marriage with an heiress, Miss
Hartley, and found them confirmed by a letter Lady Delacour received
from him. Some years ago he had formed the romantic idea of educating a
wife for himself, and having found a beautiful, artless girl in the New
Forest, he had taken her under his care on the death of her grandmother.

She felt herself bound in honour and gratitude to him when her fortune
changed, and she was acknowledged by her father, Mr. Hartley, who had
long been searching for her, and who had traced her at last by the
picture Clarence Hervey had caused to be exhibited.

With the utmost magnanimity, Hervey, although he saw a successful rival
for Belinda's hand in Augustus Vincent, rescued him from ruin at the
gaming-table, and induced him to promise never to gamble again.

"I was determined Belinda's husband should be my friend. I have
succeeded beyond my hopes," he said.

But Vincent's love of play had decided Belinda at last. She refused him
finally in a letter which she confessed she found difficult to write,
but which she sent because she had promised she would not hold him in
suspense once she had made her decision.

After this Virginia Hartley confessed to her attachment for one Captain
Sunderland, and Clarence was free to avow his passion for Belinda.

"And what is Miss Portman to believe," cried one of Belinda's friends,
"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," he
replied, "is that I was ready to sacrifice my own happiness to a sense
of duty."

* * * * *

Castle Rackrent

"Castle Rackrent" was published anonymously in 1800. It was
not only the first of Miss Edgeworth's novels,--