that I can laugh and jest about such a melancholy thing as my marriage
with Lord Delacour; and so am I, especially when I recollect all the
circumstances; for though I bragged of there being no love in my
history, there was when I was a goose or a gosling of about eighteen--
just your age, Belinda, I think--something very like love playing about
my heart, or my head. There was a certain Henry Percival, a Clarence
Hervey of a man--no, he had ten times the sense, begging your pardon, of
Clarence Hervey--his misfortune, or mine, was, that he had too much sense
--he was in love with me, but not with my faults; now I, wisely
considering that my faults were the greatest part of me, insisted upon
his being in love with my faults. He wouldn't, or couldn't--I said
wouldn't, he said couldn't. I had been used to see the men about me lick
the dust at my feet, for it was gold dust. Percival made wry faces--Lord
Delacour made none. I pointed him out to Percival as an example--it was
an example he would not follow. I was provoked, and I married in hopes
of provoking the man I loved. The worst of it was, I did not provoke him
as much as I expected. Six months afterwards I heard of his marriage
with a very amiable woman. I hate those _very amiable women_. Poor
Percival! I should have been a very happy woman, I fancy, if I had
married you--for I believe you were the only man who ever really loved
me; but all that is over now!--Where were we? O, I married my Lord
Delacour, knowing him to be a fool, and believing that, for this reason,
I should find no trouble in governing him. But what a fatal mistake!-a
fool, of all animals in the creation, is the most difficult to govern.
We set out in the fashionable world with a mutual desire to be as
extravagant as possible. Strange, that with this similarity of taste we
could never agree!--strange, that this similarity of taste was the cause
of our perpetual quarrels! During the first year of our marriage, I had
always the upper hand in these disputes, and the last word; and I was
content. Stubborn as the brute was, I thought I should in time break him