----Then came wandering by,
A shadow like a devil, with red hair,
'Dizen'd with flowers; and she bawl'd out aloud,
Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence!"

"O, Mrs. Luttridge to the life!" cried Lady Delacour: "I know where you
have been now, and I pity you--but sit down," said she, making room for
him between Belinda and herself upon the sofa, "sit down here, and tell
me what could take you to that odious Mrs. Luttridge's."

Mr. Hervey threw himself on the sofa; Lord Delacour whistled as before,
and left the room without uttering a syllable.

"But my dream has made me forget myself strangely," said Mr. Hervey,
turning to Belinda, and producing her bracelet: "Mrs. Stanhope promised me
that if I delivered it safely, I should be rewarded with the honour of
putting it on the owner's fair arm." A conversation now took place on the
nature of ladies' promises--on fashionable bracelets--on the size of the
arm of the Venus de Medici--on Lady Delacour's and Miss Portman's--on the
thick legs of ancient statues--and on the various defects and absurdities
of Mrs. Luttridge and her wig. On all these topics Mr. Hervey displayed
much wit, gallantry, and satire, with so happy an effect, that Belinda,
when he took leave, was precisely of her aunt's opinion, that he was a
most uncommonly pleasant young man.

Clarence Hervey might have been more than a pleasant young man, if he had
not been smitten with the desire of being thought superior in every thing,
and of being the most admired person in all companies. He had been early
flattered with the idea that he was a man of genius; and he imagined that,
as such, he was entitled to be imprudent, wild, and eccentric. He affected