having heard it was for Mr Harrel, and that he had been acquainted with
her visits in Portland-street, without seeming to know Mr Belfield had
a sister. Two charges such as these, so serious in their nature, and so
destructive of her character, filled her with horror and consternation,
and even somewhat served to palliate his illiberal and injurious
behaviour.

But how reports thus false and thus disgraceful should be raised, and
by what dark work of slander and malignity they had been spread,
remained a doubt inexplicable. They could not, she was certain, be the
mere rumour of chance, since in both the assertions there was some
foundation of truth, however cruelly perverted, or basely over-
charged.

This led her to consider how few people there were not only who had
interest, but who had power to propagate such calumnies; even her
acquaintance with the Belfields she remembered not ever mentioning, for
she knew none of their friends, and none of her own knew them. How,
then, should it be circulated, that she "visited often at the house?"
however be invented that it was from her "attention to the young man?"
Henrietta, she was sure, was too good and too innocent to be guilty of
such perfidy; and the young man himself had always shewn a modesty and
propriety that manifested his total freedom from the vanity of such a
suspicion, and an elevation of sentiment that would have taught him to
scorn the boast, even if he believed the partiality.

The mother, however, had neither been so modest nor so rational; she
had openly avowed her opinion that Cecilia was in love with her son;
and as that son, by never offering himself, had never been refused, her
opinion had received no check of sufficient force, for a mind so gross