“Lord,” cried she, “how like that is to a speech of Mrs Delvile’s! She has taught you exactly her manner of talking. But do you know I am informed you have got Fidel with you here? O fie, Miss Beverley! What will papa and mamma say, when they find you have taken away poor little master’s plaything?”
“And O fie, Lady Honoria! what shall I say, when I find you guilty of this mischievous frolic! I must beg, however, since you have gone thus far, that you will proceed a little farther, and send back the dog to the person from whom you received him.”
“No, not I! manage him all your own way: if you chuse to accept dogs from gentlemen, you know, it is your affair, and not mine.”
“If you really will not return him yourself, you must at least pardon me should you hear that I do in your ladyship’s name.”
Lady Honoria for some time only laughed and rallied, without coming to any explanation; but when she had exhausted all the sport she could make, she frankly owned that she had herself ordered the dog to be privately stolen, and then sent a man with him to Mrs Charlton’s.
“But you know,” she continued, “I really owed you a spite for being so ill-natured as to run away after sending me to call Mortimer to comfort and take leave of you.”
“Do you dream, Lady Honoria? when did I send you?”
“Why you know you looked as if you wished it, and that was the same thing. But really it made me appear excessively silly, when I had forced him to come back with me, and told him you were waiting for him — to see nothing of you at all, and not be able to find or trace you. He took it all for my own invention.”
“And was it not your own invention?”
“Why that’s nothing to the purpose; I wanted him to believe you sent me, for I knew else he would not come.”
“Your ladyship was a great deal too good!”
“Why now suppose I had brought you together, what possible harm could have happened from it? It would merely have given each of you some notion of a fever and ague; for first you would both have been hot, and then you would both have been cold, and then you would both have turned red, and then you would both have turned white, and then you would both have pretended to simper at the trick; and then there would have been an end of it.”
“This is a very easy way of settling it all,” cried Cecilia laughing; “however, you must be content to abide by your own theft, for you cannot in conscience expect I should take it upon myself.”
“You are terribly ungrateful, I see,” said her ladyship, “for all the trouble and contrivance and expence I have been at merely to oblige you, while the whole time, poor Mortimer, I dare say, has had his sweet Pet advertised in all the newspapers, and cried in every market-town in the kingdom. By the way, if you do send him back, I would advise you to let your man demand the reward that has been offered for him, which may serve in part of payment for his travelling expenses.”
Cecilia could only shake her head, and recollect Mrs Delvile’s expression, that her levity was incorrigible.
“O if you had seen,” she continued, “how sheepish Mortimer looked when I told him you were dying to see him before he set off! he coloured so! — just as you do now! — but I think you’re vastly alike.”
“I fear, then,” cried Cecilia, not very angry at this speech, “there is but little chance your ladyship should like either of us.”
“O yes, I do! I like odd people of all things.”
“Odd people? and in what are we so very odd?”
“O, in a thousand things. You’re so good, you know, and so grave, and so squeamish.”
“Squeamish? how?”
“Why, you know, you never laugh at the old folks, and never fly at your servants, nor smoke people before their faces, and are so civil to the old fograms, you would make one imagine you liked nobody so well. By the way, I could do no good with my little Lord Derford; he pretended to find out I was only laughing at him, and so he minded nothing I told him. I dare say, however, his father made the detection, for I am sure he had not wit enough to discover it himself.”
Cecilia then, very seriously began to entreat that she would return the dog herself, and confess her frolic, remonstrating in strong terms upon the mischievous tendency and consequences of such inconsiderate flights.
“Well,” cried she, rising, “this is all vastly true; but I have no time to hear any more of it just now; besides, it’s only forestalling my next lecture from Mrs Delvile, for you talk so much alike, that it is really very perplexing to me to remember which is which.”
She then hurried away, protesting she had already outstayed her father’s patience, and declaring the delay of another minute would occasion half a dozen expresses to know whether she was gone towards Scotland or Flanders.
This visit, however, was both pleasant and consolatory to Cecilia; who was now relieved from her suspence, and revived in her spirits by the intelligence that Delvile had no share in sending her a present, which, from him, would have been humiliating and impertinent. She regretted, indeed, that she had not instantly returned it to the castle, which she was now convinced was the measure she ought to have pursued; but to make all possible reparation, she determined that her own servant should set out with him the next morning to Bristol, and take a letter to Mrs Delvile to explain what had happened, since to conceal it from any delicacy to Lady Honoria, would be to expose herself to suspicions the most mortifying, for which that gay and careless young lady would never thank her.
She gave orders, therefore, to her servant to get ready for the journey.
When she communicated these little transactions to Mrs Charlton, that kind-hearted old lady, who knew her fondness for Fidel, advised her not yet to part with him, but merely to acquaint Mrs Delvile where he was, and what Lady Honoria had done, and, by leaving to herself the care of settling his restoration, to give her, at least, an opportunity of offering him to her acceptance.
Cecilia, however, would listen to no such proposal; she saw the firmness of Delvile in his resolution to avoid her, and knew that policy, as well as propriety, made it necessary she should part with what she could only retain to remind her of one whom she now most wished to forget.
CHAPTER 3
AN INCIDENT
The spirits of Cecilia, however, internally failed her: she considered her separation from Delvile to be now, in all probability, for life, since she saw that no struggle either of interest, inclination, or health, could bend him from his purpose; his mother, too, seemed to regard his name and his existence as equally valuable, and the scruples of his father she was certain would be still more insurmountable. Her own pride, excited by theirs, made her, indeed, with more anger than sorrow, see this general consent to abandon her; but pride and anger both failed when she considered the situation of his health; sorrow, there, took the lead, and admitted no partner: it represented him to her not only as lost to herself, but to the world; and so sad grew her reflections, and so heavy her heart, that, to avoid from Mrs Charlton observations which pained her, she stole into a summer-house in the garden the moment she had done tea, declining any companion but her affectionate Fidel.
Her tenderness and her sorrow found here a romantic consolation, in complaining to him of the absence of his master, his voluntary exile, and her fears for his health: calling upon him to participate in her sorrow, and lamenting that even this little relief would soon be denied her; and that in losing Fidel no vestige of Mortimer, but in her own breast, would remain; “Go, then, dear Fidel,” she cried, “carry back to your master all that nourishes his remembrance! Bid him not love you the less for having some time belonged to Cecilia; but never may his proud heart