“Let every man speak his own maxim, Sir,” cried Hobson; “for that's what I call fair arguing: but as to one person's speaking, and then making an answer for another into the bargain, why it's going to work no-how; you may as well talk to a counter, and think because you make a noise upon it with your own hand, it gives you the reply.”
“Why, Mr Hobson,” cried Mrs Belfield, “I am quite ashamed of you for being so dull! don't you see my son has something to say to the lady that you and I have no business to be meddling with?”
“I'm sure, ma'am, for my part,” said Mr Simkins, “I'm very agreeable to going away, for as to putting the young lady to the blush, it's what I would not do in no shape.”
“I only mean,” said Mr Hobson, when he was interrupted by Mrs Belfield, who, out of all patience, now turned him out of the room by the shoulders, and, pulling Mr Simkins after, followed herself, and shut the door, though Cecilia, much provoked, desired she would stay, and declared repeatedly that all her business was public.
Belfield, who had, looked ready to murder them all during this short scene, now approached Cecilia, and with an air of mingled spirit and respect, said, “I am much grieved, much confounded, madam, that your ears should be offended by speeches so improper to reach them; yet if it is possible I can have the honour of being of any use to you, in me, still, I hope, you feel you may confide. I am too distant from you in situation to give you reason to apprehend I can form any sinister views in serving you; and, permit me to add, I am too near you in mind, ever to give you the pain of bidding me remember that distance.”
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.