A very little time, however, she hoped would unravel
this mystery; in two days, the entertainment which
Mr Harrel had planned, to deceive the world by an
appearance of affluence to which he had lost all title,
was to take place; young Delvile, in common with every
other person who had ever been seen at the house,
had early received an invitation, which he had readily
promised to accept some time before the conversation
that seemed the period of their acquaintance had passed.
Should he, after being so long engaged, fail to keep
his appointment, she could no longer have any doubt
of the justice of her conjecture; should he, on the
contrary, again appear, from his behaviour and his
looks she might perhaps be able to gather why he had
so long been absent.
CHAPTER i.
A Rout.
The day at length arrived of which the evening and
the entrance of company were, for the first time,
as eagerly wished by Cecilia as by her dissipated
host and hostess. No expence and no pains had
been spared to render this long projected entertainment
splendid and elegant; it was to begin with a concert,
which was to be followed by a ball, and succeeded
by a supper.
Cecilia, though unusually anxious about her own affairs,
was not so engrossed by them as to behold with indifference
a scene of such unjustifiable extravagance; it contributed
to render her thoughtful and uneasy, and to deprive
her of all mental power of participating in the gaiety
of the assembly. Mr Arnott was yet more deeply
affected by the mad folly of the scheme, and received
from the whole evening no other satisfaction than
that which a look of sympathetic concern from Cecilia
occasionally afforded him.
Till nine o’clock no company appeared, except
Sir Robert Floyer, who stayed from dinner time, and
Mr Morrice, who having received an invitation for
the evening, was so much delighted with the permission
to again enter the house, that he made use of it between
six and seven o’clock, and before the family
had left the dining parlour. He apologized with
the utmost humility to Cecilia for the unfortunate
accident at the Pantheon; but as to her it had been
productive of nothing but pleasure, by exciting in
young Delvile the most flattering alarm for her safety,
she found no great difficulty in according him her
pardon.
Among those who came in the first crowd was Mr Monckton,
who, had he been equally unconscious of sinister views,
would in following his own inclination, have been
as early in his attendance as Mr Morrice; but who,
to obviate all suspicious remarks, conformed to the
fashionable tardiness of the times.
Cecilia’s chief apprehension for the evening
was that Sir Robert Floyer would ask her to dance
with him, which she could not refuse without sitting
still during the ball, nor accept, after the reports
she knew to be spread, without seeming to give a public
sanction to them. To Mr Monckton therefore, innocently
considering him as a married man and her old friend,
she frankly told her distress, adding, by way of excuse
for the hint, that the partners were to be changed
every two dances.
