The next morning he called earlier than usual; but though Lady Delacour was always at home to him, she was then unluckily dressing to go to court: he inquired whether Miss Portman would accompany her ladyship, and he learnt from his friend Marriott that she was not to be presented this day, because Mrs. Franks had not brought home her dress. Mr. Hervey called again two hours afterwards.—Lady Delacour was gone to court. He asked for Miss Portman. “Not at home,” was the mortifying answer; though, as he had passed by the windows, he had heard the delightful sound of her harp. He walked up and down in the square impatiently, till he saw Lady Delacour’s carriage appear.

“The drawing room has lasted an unconscionable time this morning,” said he, as he handed her ladyship out of her coach, “Am not I the most virtuous of virtuous women,” said Lady Delacour, “to go to court such a day as this? But,” whispered she, as she went upstairs, “like all other amazingly good people, I have amazingly good reasons for being good. The queen is soon to give a charming breakfast at Frogmore, and I am paying my court with all my might, in hopes of being asked; for Belinda must see one of their galas before we leave town, that I’m determined upon.—But where is she?” “Not at home,” said Clarence, smiling. “Oh, not at home is nonsense, you know. Shine out, appear, be found, my lovely Zara!” cried Lady Delacour, opening the library door. “Here she is—what doing I know not—studying Hervey’s Meditations on the Tombs, I should guess, by the sanctification of her looks. If you be not totally above all sublunary considerations, admire my lilies of the valley, and let me give you a lecture, not upon heads, or upon hearts, but on what is of much more consequence, upon hoops. Everybody wears hoops, but how few—’tis a melancholy consideration—how very few can manage them! There’s my friend Lady C——; in an elegant undress she passes for very genteel, but put her into a hoop and she looks as pitiable a figure, as much a prisoner, and as little able to walk, as a child in a go-cart. She gets on, I grant you, and so does the poor child; but, getting on, you know, is not walking. Oh, Clarence, I wish you had seen the two Lady R.’s sticking close to one another, their father pushing them on together, like two decanters in a bottle-coaster, with such magnificent diamond labels round their necks!”

Encouraged by Clarence Hervey’s laughter, Lady Delacour went on to mimic what she called the hoop awkwardness of all her acquaintance; and if these could have failed to divert Belinda, it was impossible for her to be serious when she heard Clarence Hervey declare that he was convinced he could manage a hoop as well as any woman in England, except Lady Delacour.

“Now here,” said he, “is the purblind dowager, Lady Boucher, just at the door, Lady Delacour; she would not know my face, she would not see my beard, and I will bet fifty guineas that I come into a room in a hoop, and that she does not find me out by my air—that I do not betray myself, in short, by my masculine awkwardness.”

“I hold you to your word, Clarence,” cried Lady Delacour. “They have let the purblind dowager in; I hear her on the stairs. Here—through this way you can go: as you do everything quicker than anybody else in the world, you will certainly be full dressed in a quarter of an hour; I’ll engage to keep the dowager in scandal for that time. Go! Marriott has old hoops and old finery of mine, and you have all-powerful influence, I know, with Marriott: so go and use it, and let us see you in all your glory—though I vow I tremble for my fifty guineas.”

Lady Delacour kept the dowager in scandal, according to her engagement, for a good quarter of an hour; then the dresses at the drawing room took up another quarter; and, at last, the dowager began to give an account of sundry wonderful cures that had been performed, to her certain knowledge, by her favourite concentrated extract or anima of quassia. She entered into the history of the negro slave named Quassi, who discovered this medical wood, which he kept a close secret till Mr. Daghlberg, a magistrate of Surinam, wormed it out of him, brought a branch of the tree to Europe, and communicated it to the great Linnaeus—when Clarence Hervey was announced by the title of “The Countess de Pomenars.”

“An émigrée—a charming woman!” whispered Lady Delacour “she was to have been at the drawing room today but for a blunder of mine: ready dressed she was, and I didn’t call for her! Ah, Mad. de Pomenars, I am actually ashamed to see you,” continued her ladyship; and she went forward to meet Clarence Hervey, who really made his entrée with very composed assurance and grace. He managed his hoop with such skill and dexterity, that he well deserved the praise of being a universal genius. The Countess de Pomenars spoke French and broken English incomparably well, and she made out that she was descended from the Pomenars of the time of Mad. de Sevigné: she said that she had in her possession several original letters of Mad. de Sevigné, and a lock of Mad. de Grignan’s fine hair.

“I have sometimes fancied, but I believe it is only my fancy,” said Lady Delacour, “that this young lady,” turning to Belinda, “is not unlike your Mad. de Grignan.