"Forgive you for what?" said Belinda; "I believe you are dreaming still, and I am sorry to awaken you; but I am come to tell you a wonderful thing--that Lord Delacour is up, and dressed, and actually in the breakfast-room; and that he has been talking to me this half hour--of what do you think?--of Helena. He was quite surprised, he said, to see her grown such a fine girl, and he declares that he no longer regrets that she was not a boy; and he says that he will dine at home to-day, on purpose to drink Helena's health in his new burgundy; and, in short, I never saw him in such good spirits, or so agreeable: I always thought he was one of the best-natured men I had ever seen. Will not you get up to breakfast? Lord Delacour has asked for you ten times within these five minutes."
"Indeed!" said Lady Delacour, rubbing her eyes. "All this is vastly wonderful; but I wish you had not awakened me so soon."
"Nay, nay," said Belinda, "I know by the tone of your voice, that you do not mean what you say; I know you will get up, and come down to us directly--so I will send Marriott."
Lady Delacour got up, and went down to breakfast, in much uncertainty what to think of Miss Portman; but ashamed to let her into her mind, and still more afraid that Lord Delacour should suspect her of doing him the honour to be jealous, Belinda had not the least guess of what was really passing in her ladyship's heart; she implicitly believed her expressions of complete indifference to her lord; and jealousy was the last feeling which Miss Portman would have attributed to Lady Delacour, because she unfortunately was not sufficiently aware that jealousy can exist without love. The idea of Lord Delacour as an object of attachment, or of a coronet as an object of ambition, or of her friend's death as an object of joy, were so foreign to Belinda's innocent mind, that it was scarcely possible she could decipher Lady Delacour's thoughts. Her ladyship affected to be in "remarkable good spirits this morning," declared that she had never felt so well since her illness, ordered her carriage as soon as breakfast was over, and said she would take Helena to Maillardet's, to see the wonders of his little conjuror and his singing-bird. "Nothing equal to Maillardet's singing-bird has ever been seen or heard of, my dear Helena, since the days of Aboulcasem's peacock in the Persian Tales. Since Lady Anne Percival has not shown you these charming things, I must."