“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.”