“Good Heaven!” cried he, looking at his watch, “already past ten! you must turn me out, my Cecilia, or calumny will still be busy, even though poor Monckton is quiet.” “I _will_ turn you out,” cried she, “I am indeed most earnest to have you gone. But tell me your plan, and which way you mean to go?” “That;” he answered, “you shall decide for me yourself: whether to Delvile Castle, to finish one tale, and wholly communicate another, or to Margate, to hasten my mother abroad, before the news of this calamity reaches her.” “Go to Margate,” cried she, eagerly, “set off this very moment! you can write to your father from Ostend. But continue, I conjure you, on the continent, till we see if this unhappy man lives, and enquire, of those who can judge, what must follow if he should not!” “A trial,” said he, “must follow, and it will go, I fear, but hardly with me! the challenge was mine; his servants can all witness I went to him, not he to me,--Oh my Cecilia! the rashness of which I have been guilty, is so opposite to my principles, and, all generous as is your silence, I know it so opposite to yours, that never, should his blood be on my hands, wretch as he was, never will my heart be quiet more.” “He will live, he will live!” cried Cecilia, repressing her horror, “fear nothing, for he will live;--and as to his wound and his sufferings, his perfidy has deserved them. Go, then, to Margate; think only of Mrs Delvile, and save her, if possible, from hearing what has happened.” “I will go,--stay,--do which and whatever you bid me: but, should what I fear come to pass, should my mother continue ill, my father inflexible, should this wretched man die, and should England no longer be a country I shall love to dwell in,--could you, then, bear to own,--would you, then, consent to follow me?” “Could I?--am I not yours? may you not command me? tell me, then, you have only to say,--shall I accompany you at once?” Delvile, affected by her generosity, could scarce utter his thanks; yet he did not hesitate in denying to avail himself of it; “No, my Cecilia,” he cried, “I am not so selfish. If we have not happier days, we will at least wait for more desperate necessity. With the uncertainty if I have not this man's life to answer for at the hazard of my own, to take my wife--my bride,--from the kingdom I must fly!--to make her a fugitive and an exile in the first publishing that she is mine! No, if I am not a destined alien for life I can never permit it. Nothing less, believe me, shall ever urge my consent to wound the chaste propriety of your character, by making you an eloper with a duelist.” They then again consulted upon their future plans; and concluded that in the present disordered state of their affairs, it would be best not to acknowledge even to Mr Delvile their marriage, to whom the news of the duel, and Mr Monckton's danger, would be a blow so severe, that, to add to it any other might half distract him.