apologies and interpretations to account for what appeared to Cecilia
strangely ill-conditioned, if not insane, in Lady Romfrey's behaviour.
The most astonishing thing to hear was, that Lady Romfrey had paid Mrs.
Devereux a visit at her Surrey house unexpectedly one Sunday in the
London season, for the purpose, as it became evident, of meeting Mr.
Blackburn Tuckham: and how she could have known that Mr. Tuckham would be
there, Mrs. Devereux could not tell, for it was, Louise assured Cecilia,
purely by chance that he and Mr. Lydiard were present: but the countess
obtained an interview with him alone, and Mr. Tuckham came from it
declaring it to have been more terrible than any he had ever been called
upon to endure. The object of the countess was to persuade him to
renounce his bride.

Louise replied to the natural inquiry--'Upon what plea?' with a
significant evasiveness. She put her arms round Cecilia's neck: 'I trust
you are not unhappy. You will get no release from him.'

'I am not unhappy,' said Cecilia, musically clear to convince her friend.

She was indeed glad to feel the stout chains of her anchor restraining
her when Lady Romfrey talked of Nevil; they were like the safety of
marriage without the dreaded ceremony, and with solitude to let her weep.
Bound thus to a weaker man than Blackburn Tuckham, though he had been
more warmly esteemed, her fancy would have drifted away over the deeps,
perhaps her cherished loyalty would have drowned in her tears--for Lady
Romfrey tasked it very severely: but he from whom she could hope for no
release, gave her some of the firmness which her nature craved in this
trial.

From saying quietly to her: 'I thought once you loved him,' when alluding
to Nevil, Lady Romfrey passed to mournful exclamations, and by degrees on
to direct entreaties. She related the whole story of Renee in England,
and appeared distressed with a desperate wonderment at Cecilia's mildness
after hearing it. Her hearer would have imagined that she had no moral
sense, if it had not been so perceptible that the poor lady's mind was
distempered on the one subject of Nevil Beauchamp. Cecilia's high
conception of duty, wherein she was a peerless flower of our English
civilization, was incommunicable: she could practise, not explain it. She
bowed to Lady Romfrey's praises of Nevil, suffered her hands to be wrung,
her heart to be touched, all but an avowal of her love of him to be
wrested from her, and not the l