Cecilia then, extremely unwilling to shock a sensibility not more generous than jealous, determined to continue her enquiries, and, at the same time, to prevent any further misapprehension, by revealing her actual situation.
"I am sorry, Sir," she answered, "to have occasioned this disturbance; Mrs Belfield, I find, is wholly unacquainted with the circumstance which now carries me abroad, or it would not have happened."
Here a little noise in the passage interrupting her, she heard Mrs Belfield, though in a low voice, say, "Hush, Sir, hush! you must not come in just now; you've caught me, I confess, rather upon the listening order; but to tell you the truth, I did not know what might be going forward. However, there's no admittance now, I assure you, for my son's upon particular business with a lady, and Mr Hobson and Mr Simkins and I, have all been as good as turned out by them but just now."
Cecilia and Belfield, though they heard this speech with mutual indignation, had no time to mark or express it, as it was answered without in a voice at once loud and furious, "You, madam, may be content to listen here; pardon me if I am less humbly disposed!" And the door was abruptly opened by young Delvile!
Cecilia, who half screamed from excess of astonishment, would scarcely, even by the presence of Belfield and his mother, have been restrained from flying to meet him, had his own aspect invited such a mark of tenderness; but far other was the case; when the door was open, he stopt short with a look half petrified, his feet seeming rooted to the spot upon which they stood.
"I declare I ask pardon, ma'am," cried Mrs Belfield, "but the interruption was no fault of mine, for the gentleman would come in; and--"
"It is no interruption, madam;" cried Belfield, "Mr Delvile does me nothing but honour."
"I thank you, Sir!" said Delvile, trying to recover and come forward, but trembling violently, and speaking with the most frigid coldness.
They were then, for a few instants, all silent; Cecilia, amazed by his arrival, still more amazed by his behaviour, feared to speak lest he meant not, as yet, to avow his marriage, and felt a thousand apprehensions that some new calamity had hurried him home: while Belfield was both hurt by his strangeness, and embarrassed for the sake of Cecilia; and his mother, though wondering at them all, was kept quiet by her son's looks.
Delvile then, struggling for an appearance of more ease, said, "I seem to have made a general confusion here:--pray, I beg"-"None at all, Sir," said Belfield, and offered a chair to Cecilia.