“Where,” cried Delvile, half frantic, “where is this infamous woman? This wretch who has thus wantonly destroyed me!”
And he rushed out of the church in pursuit of her.
The clergyman and Mr Singleton, who had hitherto been wondering spectators, came now to offer their assistance to Cecilia. She declined any help for herself, but gladly accepted their services for Mrs Charlton, who, thunderstruck by all that had past, seemed almost robbed of her faculties. Mr Singleton proposed calling a hackney coach, she consented, and they stopt for it at the church porch.
The clergyman now began to enquire of the pew-opener, what she knew of the woman, who she was, and how she had got into the church? She knew of her, she answered, nothing, but that she had come in to early prayers, and she supposed she had hid herself in a pew when they were over, as she had thought the church entirely empty.
An hackney coach now drew up, and while the gentlemen were assisting Mrs Charlton into it, Delvile returned.
“I have pursued and enquired,” cried he, “in vain, I can neither discover nor hear of her.—But what is all this? Whither are you going?—What does this coach do here?—Mrs Charlton, why do you get into it?—Cecilia, what are you doing?”
Cecilia turned away from him in silence. The shock she had received, took from her all power of speech, while amazement and terror deprived her even of relief from tears. She believed Delvile to blame, though she knew not in what, but the obscurity of her fears served only to render them more dreadful.
She was now getting into the coach herself, but Delvile, who could neither brook her displeasure, nor endure her departure, forcibly caught her hand, and called out, “You are mine, you are my wife!—I will part with you no more, and go whithersoever you will, I will follow and claim you!”
“Stop me not!” cried she, impatiently though faintly, “I am sick, I am ill already,—if you detain me any longer, I shall be unable to support myself!”
“Oh then rest on me!” cried he, still holding her; “rest but upon me till the ceremony is over!—you will drive me to despair and to madness if you leave me in this barbarous manner!”