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"Believe me, that explanations always make bad worse. Miss Portman is here, thank Heaven! and her; and Champfort is gone, thank you or your boots. And now let us sit down to breakfast, and forget as soon as possible every thing that is disagreeable."
It was a joint, or rather a triplicate performance. Champfort, in conjunction with the stupid maid, furnished the intelligence, which Mrs. Freke manufactured; and when she had put the whole into proper style and form, Mr. Champfort got her rough draught fairly copied at his leisure, and transmitted his copy to Mr. Vincent. Now all this was discovered by a very slight circumstance.
At this instant Champfort opened the door, looked in, and seeing Lady Delacour, immediately retired. "Champfort, whom do you want or what do you want?" said her ladyship. "Miladi, c'est que I did come from milord, to see if miladi and mademoiselle were visible. I did tink miladi was not at home." "You see I am at home, though," said her ladyship. "Has Lord Delacour any business with me?"
This explanation was perfectly satisfactory to Belinda; but Lady Delacour, prejudiced by the hesitation of Champfort, could not help suspecting that this letter was merely the ostensible cause of his lordship's visit. "From my aunt Stanhope," said Miss Portman, as she opened her letter. She folded it up again after glancing over the first page, and put it into her pocket, colouring deeply.
Stanhope's draft for two hundred guineas, which the coachmaker's man had just brought hack because Miss Portman had forgotten to endorse it. Belinda's astonishment was almost as great at this instant as Lady Delacour's confusion. "Come this way, my dear, and we'll find you a pen and ink. You need not wait, Champfort; but tell the man to wait for the draft Miss Portman will endorse it immediately."
There is a certain class of people, who are incapable of generous confidence in their equals, but who are disposed to yield implicit credit to the underhand information of mean emissaries. Through the medium of Champfort and the stupid maid, Mrs.
Hervey, "that she wondered that a man who was so well acquainted with the female sex should be surprised at any instance of caprice from a woman." The conversation then took another turn, and whilst they were talking of indifferent subjects, in came Lord Delacour's man, Champfort, with Mrs.
She bolted the door as she spoke . rolled an arm-chair to the fire "Now for it!" said she, seating herself. "The devil upon two sticks, if he were looking down upon me from the house-top, or Champfort, who is the worse devil of the two, would, if he were peeping through the keyhole, swear I was going to open a love-letter and so I hope I am. Now for it!" cried she, breaking the seal.
"Here," continued Lord Delacour, as Champfort had left the room, "here are your two hundred guineas, Miss Portman; and as I am going to this man about my burgundy, and shall be out all the rest of the day, let me trouble you the next time you see Lady Delacour to give her this pocket-book from me.
Lord Delacour, when the paper was shown to him, recognized it immediately by a private mark which he had put on the outside sheet of a division of letter paper, which, indeed, he had never given to Champfort, but which he had missed about the time Marriott mentioned.
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