about."

"Should I think, Sir, to eternity," cried Cecilia, "I could never
conjecture what you mean!"

"You may not chuse," said he, proudly, "to understand me; but I have
done. If it had been in my power to have interfered in your service
with my Lord Derford, notwithstanding my reluctance to being involved
in any fresh employment, I should have made a point of not refusing it:
but this young man is nobody,--a very imprudent connection--"

"What young man, Sir?"

"Nay, _I_ know nothing of him! it is by no means likely I should: but
as I had already been informed of your attention to him, the
corroborating incidents of my servant's following you to his house, his
friend's seeking him at yours, and his own waiting upon you this
morning; were not well calculated to make me withdraw my credence to
it."

"Is it, then, Mr Belfield, Sir, concerning whom you draw these
inferences, from circumstances the most accidental and unmeaning?"

"It is by no means my practice," cried he, haughtily, and with evident
marks of high displeasure at this speech, "to believe any thing
lightly, or without even unquestionable authority; what once,
therefore, I have credited, I do not often find erroneous. Mistake not,
however, what I have said into supposing I have any objection to your
marrying; on the contrary, it had been for the honour of my family had
you been married a year ago I should not then have suffered the