“Cool!” repeated Lady Delacour, as she was about to leave the room, “I never wish to be as cool as you are, Belinda! So, after all, you love Mr. Vincent--you’ll marry Mr. Vincent!” “I never said so,” replied Belinda: “you have not read my letter. Oh, Lady Delacour, at this instant--you should not reproach me.” “I did you injustice,” cried Lady Delacour, as she now looked at Belinda’s letter. “Send it--send it--you have said the very thing you ought; and now sit down with me to this packet of Clarence Hervey’s--be just to him, as you are to Mr. Vincent, that’s all I ask--give him a fair hearing:--now for it.” CHAPTER XXVI. VIRGINIA Clarence Hervey’s packet contained a history of his connexion with Virginia St. Pierre. To save our hero from the charge of egotism, we shall relate the principal circumstances in the third person. It was about a year before he had seen Belinda that Clarence Hervey returned from his travels; he had been in France just before the Revolution, when luxury and dissipation were at their height in Paris, and when a universal spirit of licentious gallantry prevailed. Some circumstances in which he was personally interested disgusted him strongly with the Parisian belles; he felt that women who were full of vanity, affectation, and artifice, whose tastes were perverted, and whose feelings were depraved, were equally incapable of conferring or enjoying real happiness. Whilst this conviction was full in his mind, he read the works of Rousseau: this eloquent writer’s sense made its full impression upon Clarence’s understanding, and his declamations produced more than their just effect upon an imagination naturally ardent. He was charmed with the picture of Sophia, when contrasted with the characters of the women of the world with whom he had been disgusted; and he formed the romantic project of educating a wife for himself. Full of this idea, he returned to England, determined to carry his scheme immediately into execution, but was some time delayed by the difficulty of finding a proper object for his purpose: it was easy to meet with beauty in distress, and ignorance in poverty; but it was difficult to find simplicity without vulgarity, ingenuity without cunning, or even ignorance without prejudice; it was difficult to meet with an understanding totally uncultivated, yet likely to reward the labour of late instruction; a heart wholly unpractised, yet full of sensibility, capable of all the enthusiasm of passion, the delicacy of sentiment, and the firmness of rational constancy. It is not wonderful that Mr. Hervey, with such high expectations, should not immediately find them gratified. Disappointed in his first search, he did not, however, relinquish his design; and at length, by accident, he discovered, or thought that he discovered, an object formed expressly for his purpose.