A group of gentlemen, amongst whom was Clarence Hervey, gathered round the tragic muse; as Mr. Hervey had hinted that he knew she was a person of distinction, though he would not tell her name. After he had exercised his wit for some time, without obtaining from the tragic muse one single syllable, he whispered, “Lady Delacour, why this unnatural reserve? Do you imagine that, through this tragical disguise, I have not found you out?” The tragic muse, apparently absorbed in meditation, vouchsafed no reply. “The devil a word can you get for your pains, Hervey,” said a gentleman of his acquaintance, who joined the party at this instant. “Why didn’t you stick to t’other muse, who, to do her justice, is as arrant a flirt as your heart could wish for?” “There’s danger in flirting,” said Clarence, “with an arrant flirt of Mrs. Stanhope’s training. There’s a kind of electricity about that girl. I have a sort of cobweb feeling, an imaginary net coming all over me.” “Fore-warned is fore-armed,” replied his companion: “a man must be a novice indeed that could be taken in at this time of day by a niece of Mrs. Stanhope’s.” “That Mrs. Stanhope must be a good clever dame, faith,” said a third gentleman: “there’s no less than six of her nieces whom she has got off within these four winters--not one of ‘em now that has not made a catch-match.--There’s the eldest of the set, Mrs. Tollemache, what had she, in the devil’s name, to set up with in the world but a pair of good eyes?--her aunt, to be sure, taught her the use of them early enough: they might have rolled to all eternity before they would have rolled me out of my senses; but you see they did Tollemache’s business. However, they are going to part now, I hear: Tollemache was tired of her before the honey-moon was over, as I foretold. Then there’s the musical girl. Joddrell, who has no more ear than a post, went and married her, because he had a mind to set up for a connoisseur in music; and Mrs. Stanhope flattered him that he was one.” The gentlemen joined in the general laugh: the tragic muse sighed. “Even were she at the School for Scandal, the tragic muse dare not laugh, except behind her mask,” said Clarence Hervey. “Far be it from her to laugh at those follies which she must for ever deplore!” said Belinda, in a feigned voice.--“What miseries spring from these ill-suited marriages! The victims are sacrificed before they have sense enough to avoid their fate.” Clarence Hervey imagined that this speech alluded to Lady Delacour’s own marriage. “Damn me if I know any woman, young or old, that would _avoid_ being married, if she could, though,” cried Sir Philip Baddely, a gentleman who always supplied “each vacuity of sense” with an oath: “but, Rochfort, didn’t Valleton marry one of these nieces?”