melancholy consideration--how very few can manage them! There's my friend
Lady C----; in an elegant undress she passes for very genteel, but put her
into a hoop and she looks as pitiable a figure, as much a prisoner, and as
little able to walk, as a child in a go-cart. She gets on, I grant you,
and so does the poor child; but, getting on, you know, is not walking. Oh,
Clarence, I wish you had seen the two Lady R.'s sticking close to one
another, their father pushing them on together, like two decanters in a
bottle-coaster, with such magnificent diamond labels round their necks!"

Encouraged by Clarence Hervey's laughter, Lady Delacour went on to mimic
what she called the hoop awkwardness of all her acquaintance; and if these
could have failed to divert Belinda, it was impossible for her to be
serious when she heard Clarence Hervey declare that he was convinced he
could manage a hoop as well as any woman in England, except Lady Delacour.

"Now here," said he, "is the purblind dowager, Lady Boucher, just at the
door, Lady Delacour; she would not know my face, she would not see my
beard, and I will bet fifty guineas that I come into a room in a hoop, and
that she does not find me out by my air--that I do not betray myself, in
short, by my masculine awkwardness."

"I hold you to your word, Clarence," cried Lady Delacour. "They have let
the purblind dowager in; I hear her on the stairs. Here--through this way
you can go: as you do every thing quicker than any body else in the world,
you will certainly be full dressed in a quarter of an hour; I'll engage to
keep the dowager in scandal for that time. Go! Marriott has old hoops and
old finery of mine, and you have all-powerful influence, I know, with
Marriott: so go and use it, and let us see you in all your glory--though I
vow I tremble for my fifty guineas."