don't know my own mind better than any of you. You don't imagine I go to
Lady Delacour's to look for a _wife?_--Belinda Portman's a good pretty
girl, but what then? Do you think I'm an idiot?--do you think I could be
taken in by one of the Stanhope school? Do you think I don't see as
plainly as any of you that Belinda Portman's a composition of art and
affectation?"

"Hush--not so loud, Clarence; here she comes," said his companion. "The
comic muse, is not she--?"

Lady Delacour, at this moment, came lightly tripping towards them, and
addressing herself, in the character of the comic muse, to Hervey,
exclaimed,

"Hervey! _my_ Hervey! most favoured of my votaries, why do you forsake me?

'Why mourns my friend, why weeps his downcast eye?
That eye where mirth and fancy used to shine.'

Though you have lost your serpent's form, yet you may please any of the
fair daughters of Eve in your own."

Mr. Hervey bowed; all the gentlemen who stood near him smiled; the tragic
muse gave an involuntary sigh.

"Could I borrow a sigh, or a tear, from my tragic sister," pursued Lady
Delacour, "however unbecoming to my character, I would, if only sighs or
tears can win the heart of Clarence Hervey:--let me practise"--and her
ladyship practised sighing with much comic effect.