The next morning, about an hour after breakfast was finished, Mrs Lascelles entered the cabin pretending to be in the greatest consternation, and fell on the sofa as if she were going to faint.
“Good heavens! What is the matter?” exclaimed Cecilia, who knew very well what was coming.
“Oh, the wretch! He has made such proposals!”
“Proposals! What proposals? What! Lord Blaney?” cried Miss Ossulton.
“Oh, he’s no lord! He’s a villain and a smuggler! And he insists that we shall both fill our pockets full of lace, and go on shore with him.”
“Mercy on me! Then it is no hoax after all; and I’ve been sitting down to dinner with a smuggler!”
“Sitting down, madam!—if it were to be no more than that—but we are to take his arm up to the hotel. Oh dear! Cecilia, I am ordered on deck; pray, come with me!”
Miss Ossulton rolled on the sofa, and rang for Phoebe; she was in a state of great alarm.
A knock at the door.
“Come in,” said Miss Ossulton, thinking it was Phoebe; when Pickersgill made his appearance.