“You were right to swear they were not love-letters,” pursued her ladyship, laying down the papers. “I protest I snatched them by way of frolic--I beg pardon. All I can do now is not to read the rest.” “Nay--I beg--I wish--I insist upon your reading mine,” said Belinda. When Lady Delacour had read it, her countenance suddenly changed--“Worth a hundred of your aunt’s, I declare,” said she, patting Belinda’s cheek. “What a treasure to meet with any thing like a _new_ heart!--all hearts, now-a-days, are second-hand, at best.” Lady Delacour spoke with a tone of feeling which Belinda had never heard from her before, and which at this moment touched her so much, that she took her ladyship’s hand and kissed it. CHAPTER II. MASKS “Where were we when all this began?” cried Lady Delacour, forcing herself to resume an air of gaiety--“O, masquerade was the order of the day---tragedy or comedy? which suits your genius best, my dear?” “Whichever suits your ladyship’s taste least.” “Why, my woman, Marriott, says I ought to be tragedy; and, upon the notion that people always succeed best when they take characters diametrically opposite to their own--Clarence Hervey’s principle--perhaps you don’t think that he has any principles; but there you are wrong; I do assure you, he has sound principles--of taste.” “Of that,” said Belinda, with a constrained smile, “he gives the most convincing proof, by his admiring your ladyship so much.” “And by his admiring Miss Portman so much more. But whilst we are making speeches to one another, poor Marriott is standing in distress, like Garrick, between tragedy and comedy.” Lady Delacour opened her dressing-room door, and pointed to her as she stood with the dress of the comic muse on one arm, and the tragic muse on the other. “I am afraid I have not spirits enough to undertake the comic muse,” said Miss Portman. Marriott, who was a personage of prodigious consequence, and the judge in the last resort at her mistress’s toilette, looked extremely out of humour at having been kept waiting so long; and yet more so at the idea that her appellant jurisdiction could be disputed. “Your ladyship’s taller than Miss Portman by half ahead,” said Marriott, “and to be sure will best become tragedy with this long train; besides, I had settled all the rest of your ladyship’s dress. Tragedy, they say, is always tall; and, no offence, your ladyship’s taller than Miss Portman by half a head.” “For head read inch,” said Lady Delacour, “if you please.” “When things are settled, one can’t bear to have them unsettled--but your ladyship must have your own way, to be sure--I’ll say no more,” cried she, throwing down the dresses. “Stay, Marriott,” said Lady Delacour, and she placed herself between the angry waiting-maid and the door. “Why will you, who are the best creature in the world, put yourself into these _furies_ about nothing? Have patience with us, and you shall be satisfied.” “That’s another affair,” said Marriott.