"
"Did any letter, any packet, come here for me? Inquire, inquire," said she, impatiently, to the servant who came in. No letter or packet was to be heard of. It had been directed, Mr. Hervey now remembered, to her ladyship's house in town. She gave orders to have it immediately sent for; but scarcely had she given them, when, turning to Mr. Hervey, she laughed and said, "A very foolish compliment to you and your letter, for you certainly can speak as well as you can write; nay, better, I think—though you don't write ill, neither—but you can tell me, in two words, what in writing would take half a volume. Leave this gentleman and lady to 'the dying Negro,' and let me hear your two words in Lord Delacour's dressing-room, if you please," said she, opening the door of an adjoining apartment. "Lord Delacour will not be jealous if he find you tête-à-tête with me, I promise you. But you shall not be compelled. You look—"
"I look," said Mr. Hervey, affecting to laugh, "as if I felt the impossibility of putting half a volume into two words. It is a long story, and—"
"And I must wait for the packet, whether I will or no—well, be it so," said Lady Delacour. Struck with the extreme perturbation into which he was thrown, she pressed him with no farther raillery, but instantly attempted to change the conversation to general subjects.
Again she had recourse to 'the dying Negro.' Mr. Vincent, to whom she now addressed herself, said, "For my part, I neither have, nor pretend to have, much critical taste; but I admire in this poem the manly, energetic spirit of virtue which it breathes." From the poem, an easy transition was made to the author; and Clarence Hervey, exerting himself to join in the conversation, observed, "that this writer (Mr. Day) was an instance that genuine eloquence must spring from the heart. Cicero was certainly right," continued he, addressing himself to Mr. Vincent, "in his definition of a great orator, to make it one of the first requisites, that he should be a good man."
Mr. Vincent coldly replied, "This definition would exclude too many men of superior talents, to be easily admitted."
"Perhaps the appearance of virtue," said Belinda