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."

Belinda, when she was left alone, immediately opened her shutters, and
threw up the sash, to refresh herself with the morning air. She felt
excessively fatigued, and in the hurry of her mind she could not think of
any thing distinctly. She took off her masquerade dress, and went to bed
in hopes of forgetting, for a few hours, what she felt indelibly impressed
upon her imagination. But it was in vain that she endeavoured to compose
herself to sleep; her ideas were in too great and painful confusion. For
some time, whenever she closed her eyes, the face and form of Lady
Delacour, such as she had just beheld them, seemed to haunt her;
afterwards, the idea of Clarence Hervey, and the painful recollection of
the conversation she had overheard, recurred to her: the words, "Do you
think I don't know that Belinda Portman is a composition of art and
affectation?" fixed in her memory. She recollected with the utmost
minuteness every look of contempt which she had seen in the faces of the
young men whilst they spoke of Mrs. Stanhope, the match-maker. Belinda's
mind, however, was not yet sufficiently calm to reflect; she seemed only