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Dissipation, women, wine, Tarleton for a friend, Lady Hasselton for a mistress. Let me now throw aside the mask. To people who have naturally very intense and very acute feelings, nothing is so fretting, so wearing to the heart, as the commonplace affections, which are the properties and offspring of the world. We have seen the birds which, with wings unclipt, children fasten to a stake.
"I have sworn," said I, fixing my eyes upon the lady, "I have sworn never to be kissed, even by women. You must pardon me, Uncle." "I declare," cried the Lady Hasselton, flirting her fan, which was somewhat smaller than the screen that one puts into a great hall, in order to take off the discomfort of too large a room, "I declare, Count, there is a vast deal of originality about you.
"Hope, sir?" said the Lady Hasselton, covering her face with her fan, so as only to leave me a glimpse of the farthest patch upon her left cheek, "hope, sir?" "Yes, the hope of being pleasing to you. Suffer me to add that the hope has now become certainty." "Upon my word, Count " "Nay, you cannot deny it; if one can once succeed in impudence, one is irresistible."
Ever since that conversation with Lady Hasselton which has been set before the reader, that lady had lingered and lingered though the house was growing empty, and London, in all seasons, was, according to her, better than the country in any until the Count Devereux, with that amiable modesty which so especially characterized him, began to suspect that the Lady Hasselton lingered on his account.
To say truth, and to say nothing of my /tendresse/ for the Lady Hasselton, I was very anxious to escape the ridicule of crawling up to the town like a green beetle, in my uncle's verdant chariot, with the four Flanders mares trained not to exceed two miles an hour.
The very old maids, who, so long as they thought me single, would have declared that the will was a fraud, would, directly they heard I was married, ask if Gerald was handsome, and assert, with a wise look, that my uncle knew well what he was about. Then the joy of the Lady Hasselton, and the curled lip of the haughty Tarleton!
"Really," answered I, "one learns to forget time so terribly in the presence of Lady Hasselton that I do not remember even how long it has existed for me." "Bravo!" cried the knight, with a moistening eye; "you see, Madam, the boy has not lived with his old uncle for nothing."
"I love you too well!" answered the Lady Hasselton in the same tone, and that answer gives an admirable idea of the affection of every coquette! love and confidence with them are qualities that have a natural antipathy, and can never be united. Our /tete-a-tete/ was at an end; the people round us became social, and conversation general.
"Pardon me," said I, "I /am/ nine, a very mystical number nine is too, and represents the Muses, who, you know, were always attendant upon Venus or you, which is the same thing; so you can no more dispense with my company than you can with that of the Graces." "Good morning, Sir William," cried the Lady Hasselton, rising.
The Lady Hasselton, no disparagement to her merits, is but one woman; but a French valet who knows his /metier/ arms one for conquest over a thousand;" and I turned to the saloon. Fate, which had destined to me the valuable affections of the Lady Hasselton, granted me also, at a yet earlier period, the greater boon of a French valet.
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