should injure yourself. Sit down-for Heaven's sake listen to your friend, to Belinda.' 'My friend! My Belinda!' cried Lady Delacour.

'O, Belinda! You whom I have so loved, so trusted!' The tears rolled fast down her painted cheeks; she wiped them hastily away, but so roughly that she became a strange and ghastly spectacle. Unconscious of her disordered appearance, she rushed past Belinda, who vainly attempted to stop her, threw up the sash, and, stretching herself far out of the window, gasped for breath. Miss Portman drew her back, and closed the window, saying, 'The rouge is all off your face, my dear Lady Delacour; you are not fit to be seen.' 'Rouge! Not fit to

be seen! At such a time as this, to talk to me in this manner! O, niece of Mrs. Stanhope! dupe, dupe, that I am.'

Belinda tries to reason with Lady Delacour's jealousy, which takes the form of ironical meekness, only to burst out again in envenomed accusation. “You are goodness itself, and gentleness, and prudence personified. You know perfectly how to manage her whom you fear you have driven to madness. But, tell me, good, gentle, prudent Miss Portman, why need you dread so much that I should go mad? would believe me whatever I said.

.

. Nobody And would

not this be almost as if I were dead and buried? No; your calculations are better than mine: the poor mad wife would. .. yet stand between you and the fond object of your secret soul—a coronet. . . . O, Belinda, do not you see that a coronet cannot confer happiness?' 'I have seen it long; I pity you from the bottom of my soul,' said Belinda, bursting into tears."

Lady Delacour cannot believe the girl is leaving her house when she leaves the room; she determines to balk the hope of being pressed to stay, which she imagines in Belinda; and when some people call she swiftly re

pairs her looks and goes to receive them. "Fresh
rouged, and beautifully dressed, she was performing
her part to a brilliant audience, when Belinda entered
the drawing-room.
'You dine with Lady
Anne, Miss Portman, I understand. Though you talk
of running away from me
I am with all due

humility so confident of the irresistible attractions of this
house, that I defy Oakley Park and all its charms. So,
Miss Portman, instead of adieu, I shall only say au re-
voir!' 'Adieu, Lady Delacour!' said Belinda, with a look
and tone that struck her ladyship to the heart. All
her suspicions, all her pride, all her affected gayety for-
sook her..
She flew after Miss Portman, stopped
her at the head of the stairs and exclaimed, 'My dear-
est Belinda, are you gone? My best, my only friend,
say you are not gone forever! Say you will return!'
'Adieu,' repeated Belinda."

We are told that she broke from Lady Delacour with a heart full of pity for her, but sure of the right and wisdom of her course; and nothing in the whole scene between them is more finely ascertained than the delicate dignity and goodness with which Belinda behaves. In this she is worthy to be the heroine of her own story, and though she must divide the honors with Lady Delacour, in the dramatic moments, she has the heroine's true supremacy as a subtler study of character, and a newer type. The intensely emotional nature like Lady Delacour, vivid, violent, reckless, has been often done, and it is always fascinating; but it has seldom been so well done as by Miss Edgeworth, who, with a few touches of analysis, has allowed it to express itself. Yet, after all, a nature like Belinda's, ruled by principles and bound by scruples, the nature of a lady, is far more difficult to do.

36

JANE AUSTEN'S ELIZABETH BENNET

HE fashion of Maria Edgeworth's world has long

THE

passed away, but human nature is still here, and the fiction which was so true to it in the first years of the century is true to it in the last. "The Absentee," "Vivian," "Ennui," "Helen," "Patronage," show their kindred with "Belinda," and by their frank and fresh treatment of character, their knowledge of society, and their employment of the major rather than the minor means of moving and amending the reader, they all declare themselves of the same lineage. In their primitive ethicism they own "Pamela," and "Sir Charles Grandison" for their ancestors; but they are much more dramatic than Richardson's novels; they are almost theatrical in their haste for a direct moral effect. In this they are like the Burney-D'Arblay novels, which also deal with fashionable life, with dissipated lords and ladies, with gay parties at Vauxhall and Ranelagh, with debts and duns, with balls and routs in splendid houses, whose doors are haunted by sheriff's officers, with bankruptcies and arrests, or flights and suicides. But the drama of the Edgeworth fiction tends mostly to tragedy, and that of the Burney-D'Arblay fiction to comedy; though there are cases in the first where the wrong-doer is saved alive, and cases in the last where he is lost in his sins. The author of "Evelina" was a good but light spirit, the author of "Belinda" was a good but very serious soul and was amusing with many misgivings. Maria Edgeworth