“Promise, swear to me,” resumed Lady Delacour vehemently, seizing Belinda’s hand, “that you will never reveal to any mortal what you have seen and heard this night. No living creature suspects that Lady Delacour is dying by inches, except Marriott and that woman whom but a few hours ago I thought my _real friend_, to whom I trusted every secret of my life, every thought of my heart. Fool! idiot! dupe that I was to trust to the friendship of a woman whom I knew to be without principle: but I thought she had honour; I thought she could never betray _me_,--O Harriot! Harriot! you to desert me!--Any thing else I could have borne--but you, who I thought would have supported me in the tortures of mind and body which I am to go through--you that I thought would receive my last breath--you to desert me!--Now I am alone in the world--left to the mercy of an insolent waiting-woman.” Lady Delacour hid her face in Belinda’s lap, and almost stifled by the violence of contending emotions, she at last gave vent to them, and sobbed aloud. “Trust to one,” said Belinda, pressing her hand, with all the tenderness which humanity could dictate, “who will never leave you at the mercy of an insolent waiting-woman--trust to me.” “Trust to you!” said Lady Delacour, looking up eagerly in Belinda’s face; “yes--I think--I may trust to you; for though a niece of Mrs. Stanhope’s, I have seen this day, and have seen with surprise, symptoms of artless feeling about you. This was what tempted me to open my mind to you when I found that I had lost the only friend--but I will think no more of that--if you have a heart, you must feel for me.--Leave me now--tomorrow you shall hear my whole history--now I am quite exhausted--ring for Marriott.” Marriott appeared with a face of constrained civility and latent rage. “Put me to bed, Marriott,” said Lady Delacour, with a subdued voice; “but first light Miss Portman to her room--she need not--yet--see the horrid business of my toilette.”