“Mr Harrel, Sir; was not you just now asking me who he was?” “O, ay, true,” cried Meadows, in a tone of extreme weariness, “I am much obliged to you. Pray give my respects to him.” And, touching his hat, he was riding away; but the astonished Morrice called out, “Your respects to him? why lord! Sir, don't you know he's dead?” “Dead?--who, Sir?” “Why Mr Harrel, Sir.” “Harrel?--O, very true,” cried Meadows, with a face of sudden recollection; “he shot himself, I think, or was knocked down, or something of that sort. I remember it perfectly.” “O pray,” cried Miss Larolles, “don't let's talk about it, it's the cruellest thing I ever knew in my life. I assure you I was so shocked, I thought I should never have got the better of it. I remember the next night at Ranelagh I could talk of nothing else. I dare say I told it to 500 people. I assure you I was tired to death; only conceive how distressing!” “An excellent method,” cried Mr Gosport, “to drive it out of your own head, by driving it into the heads of your neighbours! But were you not afraid, by such an ebullition of pathos, to burst as many hearts as you had auditors?” “O I assure you,” cried she, “every body was so excessive shocked you've no notion; one heard of nothing else; all the world was raving mad about it.” “Really yes,” cried the Captain; “the subject was obsedé upon one partout. There was scarce any breathing for it; it poured from all directions; I must confess I was aneanti with it to a degree.” “But the most shocking thing in nature,” cried Miss Larolles, “was going to the sale. I never missed a single day. One used to meet the whole world there, and every body was so sorry you can't conceive. It was quite horrid. I assure you I never suffered so much before; it made me so unhappy you can't imagine.” “That I am most ready to grant,” said Mr Gosport, “be the powers of imagination ever so eccentric.” “Sir Robert Floyer and Mr Marriot,” continued Miss Larolles, “have behaved so ill you've no idea, for they have done nothing ever since but say how monstrously Mr Harrel had cheated them, and how they lost such immense sums by him;--only conceive how ill-natured!” “And they complain,” cried Morrice, “that old Mr Delvile used them worse; for that when they had been defrauded of all that money on purpose to pay their addresses to Miss Beverley, he would never let them see her, but all of a sudden took her off into the country, on purpose to marry her to his own son.” The cheeks of Cecilia now glowed with the deepest blushes; but finding by a general silence that she was expected to make some answer, she said, with what unconcern she could assume, “They were very much mistaken; Mr Delvile had no such view.” “Indeed?” cried Mr Gosport, again perceiving her change of countenance; “and is it possible you have actually escaped a siege, while every body concluded you taken by assault? Pray where is young Delvile at present?” “I don't--I can't tell, Sir.”