I took her home to her schoolmistress, and I was so pleased with the beginning of this acquaintance, that I was determined to cultivate it. One good acquaintance I have heard always leads to another. Helena introduced me to her aunt Delacour as her best friend. Mrs. Margaret Delacour has had the goodness to let her little niece spend the holidays and all her leisure time with me, so that our acquaintance has grown into friendship. Helena has become quite one of my family.”

“And I am sure she has become quite a different creature since she has been so much with you,” cried Mrs. Delacour; “her spirits were quite broken by her mother’s neglect of her: young as she is, she has a great deal of real sensibility; but as to her mother’s sensibility—”

At the recollection of Lady Delacour’s neglect of her child, Mrs. Delacour was going again to launch forth into indignant invective, but Lady Anne stopped her, by whispering—

“Take care what you say of the mother, for here is the daughter coming, and she has, indeed, a great deal of real sensibility.”

Helena and her young companions now came into the room, bringing with them the sulphurs at which they had been looking.

“Mamma,” said little Charles Percival, “we have brought the sulphurs to you, because there are some of them that I don’t know.”

“Wonderful!” said Lady Anne; “and what is not quite so wonderful, there are some of them that I don’t know.”

The children spread the sulphurs upon a little table, and all the company gathered round it.

“Here are all the nine muses for you,” said the least of the boys, who had taken his seat by Clarence Hervey at dinner; “here are all the muses for you, Mr. Hervey: which do you like best?—Oh, that’s the tragic muse that you have chosen!—You don’t like the tragic better than the comic muse, do you?”

Clarence Hervey made no answer, for he was at that instant recollecting how Belinda looked in the character of the tragic muse.

“Has your ladyship ever happened to meet with the young lady who has spent this winter with Lady Delacour?” said Clarence to Lady Anne.

“I sat near her one night at the opera,” said Lady Anne: “she has a charming countenance.”

“Who?—Belinda Portman, do you mean?” said Mrs. Delacour. “I am sure if I were a young man, I would not trust to the charming countenance of a young lady who is a pupil of Mrs. Stanhope’s, and a friend of—Helena, my dear, shut the door—the most dissipated woman in London.”

“Indeed,” said Lady Anne, “Miss Portman is in a dangerous situation; but some young people learn prudence by being placed in dangerous situations, as some young horses, I have heard Mr. Percival say, learn to be sure-footed, by being left to pick their own way on bad roads.”

Here Mr. Percival, Dr. X——, and some other gentlemen, came up stairs to tea, and the conversation took another turn. Clarence Hervey endeavoured to take his share in it with his usual vivacity, but he was thinking of Belinda Portman, dangerous situations, stumbling horses, etc; and he made several blunders, which showed his absence of mind.

“What have you there, Mr. Hervey?” said Dr. X——, looking over his shoulder—“the tragic muse? This tragic muse seems to rival Lady Delacour in your admiration.”

“Oh,” said Clarence, smiling, “you know I was always a votary of the muses.”

“And a favoured votary,” said Dr. X——. “I wish for the interests of literature, that poets may always be lovers, though I cannot say that I desire lovers should always be poets. But, Mr. Hervey, you must never marry, remember,” continued Dr. X——, “never—for your true poet must always be miserable. You know Petrarch tells us, he would not have been happy if he could; he would not have married his mistress if it had been in his power; because then there would have been an end of his beautiful sonnets.”

“Every one to his taste,” said Clarence; “for my part I have even less ambition to imitate the heroism than hope of being inspired with the poetic genius of Petrarch. I have no wish to pass whole nights composing sonnets.