“Well, my dear; but here is something better than _pure description_--here is sense for you: and pray mark the politeness of addressing sense to a woman--to a woman of sense, I mean--and which of us is not? Then here is sentiment for you,” continued her ladyship, spreading another letter before Belinda; “a story of a Dorsetshire lady, who had the misfortune to be married to a man as _unlike_ Mr. Percival, and as like Lord Delacour, as possible; and yet, oh, wonderful! they make as happy a couple as one’s heart could wish. Now, I am truly candid and good-natured to admire this letter; for every word of it is a lesson to me, and evidently was so intended. But I take it all in good part, because, to do Clarence justice, he describes the joys of domestic Paradise in such elegant language, that he does not make me sick. In short, my dear Belinda, to finish my panegyric, as it has been said of some other epistles, if ever there were letters calculated to make you fall in love with the writer of them, these are they.” “Then,” said Miss Portman, folding up the letter which she was just going to read, “I will not run the hazard of reading them.” “Why, my dear,” said Lady Delacour, with a look of mingled concern, reproach, and raillery, “have you actually given up my poor Clarence, merely on account of this mistress in the wood, this Virginia St. Pierre? Nonsense! Begging your pardon, my dear, the man loves you. Some entanglement, some punctilio, some doubt, some delicacy, some folly, prevents him from being just at this moment, where, I confess, he ought to be--at your feet; and you, out of patience, which a young lady ought never to be if she can help it, will go and marry--I know you will--some stick of a rival, purely to provoke him.” “If ever I marry,” said Belinda, with a look of proud humility, “I shall certainly marry to please myself, and not to provoke any body else; and, at all events, I hope I shall never marry _a stick_.” “Pardon me that word,” said Lady Delacour. “I am convinced you never will--but one is apt to judge of others by one’s self. I am willing to believe that Mr. Vincent----” “Mr. Vincent! How did you know----” exclaimed Belinda. “How did I know? Why, my dear, do you think I am so little interested about you, that I have not found out some of your secrets? And do you think that Marriott could refrain from telling me, in her most triumphant tone, that ‘Miss Portman has not gone to Oakly-park for nothing; that she has made a conquest of a Mr. Vincent, a West Indian, a ward, or lately a ward, of Mr. Percival’s, the handsomest man that ever was seen, and the richest, &c. &c. &c.?’ Now simple I rejoiced at the news; for I took it for granted you would never seriously think of marrying the man.” “Then why did your ladyship rejoice?”