Against them she quoted the memoirs and authority of the celebrated Mrs. Bellamy, who has a case in point to prove that “straw colour must ever look like dirty white by candlelight.” Mrs. Franks, to compromise the matter, proposed gold laburnums, “because nothing can look better by candlelight, or any light, than gold;” and Lady Delacour, who was afraid that the milliner’s imagination, now that it had once touched upon gold, might be led to the vulgar idea of ready money, suddenly broke up the conference, by exclaiming,

“We shall be late at Phillips’s exhibition of French china. Mrs. Franks must let us see her again tomorrow, to take into consideration your court dress, my dear Belinda—‘Miss Portman presented by Lady Delacour’—Mrs. Franks, let her dress, for heaven’s sake, be something that will make a fine paragraph:—I give you four-and-twenty hours to think of it. I have done a horrid act this day,” continued she, after Mrs. Franks had left the room—“absolutely written a twisted note to Clarence Hervey, my dear—but why did I tell you that? Now your head will run upon the twisted note all day, instead of upon ‘The Life and Opinions of a Lady of Quality, related by herself.’”

After dinner Lady Delacour having made Belinda protest and blush, and blush and protest, that her head was not running upon the twisted note, began the history of her life and opinions in the following manner:

“I do nothing by halves, my dear. I shall not tell you my adventures as Gil Blas told his to the Count d’Olivarez—skipping over the useful passages. I am no hypocrite, and have nothing worse than folly to conceal: that’s bad enough—for a woman who is known to play the fool is always suspected of playing the devil. But I begin where I ought to end—with my moral, which I dare say you are not impatient to anticipate. I never read or listened to a moral at the end of a story in my life:—manners for me, and morals for those that like them. My dear, you will be woefully disappointed if in my story you expect anything like a novel. I once heard a general say, that nothing was less like a review than a battle; and I can tell you that nothing is more unlike a novel than real life. Of all lives, mine has been the least romantic. No love in it, but a great deal of hate. I was a rich heiress—I had, I believe, a hundred thousand pounds, or more, and twice as many caprices: I was handsome and witty—or, to speak with that kind of circumlocution which is called humility, the world, the partial world, thought me a beauty and a bel-esprit. Having told you my fortune, need I add, that I, or it, had lovers in abundance—of all sorts and degrees—not to reckon those, it may be presumed, who died of concealed passions for me? I had sixteen declarations and proposals in form; then what in the name of wonder, or of common sense—which by-the-bye is the greatest of wonders—what, in the name of common sense, made me marry Lord Delacour? Why, my dear, you—no, not you, but any girl who is not used to have a parcel of admirers, would think it the easiest thing in the world to make her choice; but let her judge by what she feels when a dexterous mercer or linen-draper produces pretty thing after pretty thing—and this is so becoming, and this will wear forever, as he swears; but then that’s so fashionable;—the novice stands in a charming perplexity, and after examining, and doubting, and tossing over half the goods in the shop, it’s ten to one, when it begins to get late, the young lady, in a hurry, pitches upon the very ugliest and worst thing that she has seen. Just so it was with me and my lovers, and just so—

‘Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,’

I pitched upon Viscount Delacour for my lord and judge. He had just at that time lost at Newmarket more than he was worth in every sense of the word; and my fortune was the most convenient thing in the world to a man in his condition. Lozenges are of sovereign use in some complaints. The heiress lozenge is a specific in some consumptions. You are surprised that I can laugh and jest about such a melancholy thing as my marriage with Lord Delacour; and so am I, especially when I recollect all the circumstances; for though I bragged of there being no love in my history, there was when I was a goose or a gosling of about eighteen—just your age, Belinda, I think—something very like love playing about my heart, or my head. There was a certain Henry Percival, a Clarence Hervey of a man—no, he had ten times the sense, begging your pardon, of Clarence Hervey—his misfortune, or mine, was, that he had too much sense—he was in love with me, but not with my faults; now I, wisely considering that my faults were the greatest part of me, insisted upon his being in love with my faults. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t—I said wouldn’t, he said couldn’t. I had been used to see the men about me lick the dust at my feet, for it was gold dust. Percival made wry faces—Lord Delacour made none. I pointed him out to Percival as an example—it was an example he would not follow. I was provoked, and I married in hopes of provoking the man I loved. The worst of it was, I did not provoke him as much as I expected.