The horses ran away with Lady Delacour, injuring her ankle, and on her being brought home by Clarence, Lord Delacour wished to enter the locked cabinet for arque-busade. On being denied entrance, he seized the key, believing a lover of hers was concealed there, until Belinda sprang forward and took it from him, leaving them to believe what they would.

This circumstance was afterwards explained by Dr. X——­, a mutual friend, and Hervey was so much charmed with Belinda that he would have gone to her at once—­only that he had undertaken the reformation of Lady Delacour.

III.—­An Unexpected Suitor

In the meantime, after spending a morning in tasting wines, and thinking that, although he had never learned to swim, some recollection he had of an essay on swimming would ensure his safety, he betted his friends a hundred guineas that he would swim to a certain point, and flinging himself into the Serpentine, would have drowned before their eyes but for the help of Mr. Percival.  The breach caused by this affair induced Sir Philip Baddely, a gentleman who always supplied “each vacuity of sense” with an oath, to endeavour to cut him out by proposing to Belinda.

“Damme, you’re ten times handsomer than the finest woman I ever saw, for, damme, I didn’t know what it was to be in love then,” he said, heaving an audible sigh.  “I’ll trouble you for Mrs. Stanhope’s direction, Miss Portman; I believe, to do the thing in style, I ought to write to her before I speak to you.”

Belinda looked at him in astonishment, and then, finding he was in earnest, assured him it was not in her power to encourage his addresses, although she was fully sensible of the honour he had done her.

“Confusion seize me!” cried he, starting up, “if it isn’t the most extraordinary thing I ever heard!  Is it to Sir Philip Baddely’s fortune—­L15,000 a year—­you object, or to his family, or to his person?  Oh, curse it!” said he, changing his tone, “you’re only quizzing me to see how I should look—­you do it too well, you little coquette!”

Belinda again assured him she was entirely in earnest, and that she was incapable of the sort of coquetry which he ascribed to her.  To punish her for this rejection he spread the report of Hervey’s entanglement with a beautiful girl named Virginia, whose picture he had sent to an exhibition.  He also roused Lady Delacour’s jealousy into the belief that Belinda meant to marry her husband, the viscount, after her death.

In her efforts to bring husband and wife together, Belinda had forgotten that jealousy could exist without love, and a letter from Mrs. Stanhope, exaggerating the scandalous reports in the hope of forcing her niece to marry Sir Philip Baddely, shocked her so much that when Lady Delacour quarrelled with her, she accepted an invitation from Lady Anne Percival, and went there at once.

There she became acquainted with Mr. Percival’s ward, Augustus Vincent, a Creole, about two-and-twenty, tall and remarkably handsome, with striking manners and an engaging person, who fixed his favourable attention on her.  The Percivals would have wished her to marry him, but she still thought too much of Clarence Hervey to consent, although she believed he had some engagement with the lovely Virginia.