"Aye, aye, Mr. Sedley, you may go on as you please; preside in your own vay, but remember I knows what's what. I can tell Miss Seymour here, impudence is a bad prostitute for honesty." Though Selina could not quite understand the full import of Mrs. Sullivan's observations, which she endeavoured to render still more significant by shrugs and gestures; yet by the heightened colour of the lady's complexion, and a transient gravity that passed over the countenances of both gentlemen, she plainly discovered the conversation had taken a turn unpleasant to all parties; therefore, with that true politeness which arises from natural benevolence, she endeavoured to soothe the irrascible feelings of each, by diverting their thoughts into another channel. To Mrs. Sullivan she paid an elegant, and not very exaggerated compliment on Cecilia's particularly good looks. To Mr. Webberly's request that she would dance with him, she acceded with an alacrity, that seemed to verify her expression of regret that her other engagements obliged her to postpone hers with him for some dances; and by sending Sedley on an embassy to Lady Eltondale, she prevented a renewal of the skirmish between him and the offended mother, which the equivocal expression of his countenance led her to believe was not an impossible event. "Lawk, mama!" exclaimed Miss Webberly, in an elevated tone, as soon as he had left the groupe, "I wonder you can condescend to notice him so;--you're always fighting him now." "Vhy I know, Meely, I oughtn't to demon myself to such a feller; but I can't bear, not I, to see him ballooning (lampooning) poor Jack there, while every feature in his physiology shows that he's mocking him up all the time:--I can't bear no such hypercritics, not I." Cecilia now warmly undertook his defence, which she entered upon with still more zeal as the subject of her mother's philippic had made an _amende honorable_ to her at least, by engaging her for the same set that her brother was to dance with Miss Seymour, who in the mean time having succeeded in parting the combatants, had gone to resume her station amongst the dancers.