Among the first morning visitors admitted were Lady Castlefort and Lady Katrine Hawksby. They did not, as it struck Cecilia, seem surprised to see that Miss Stanley was Miss Stanley still, though the day for the marriage had been announced in all the papers as fixed; but they did seem now full of curiosity to know how it had come to pass, and there was rather too apparent a hope that something was going wrong. Their first inquisitive look was met by Lady Cecilia’s careless glance in reply, which said better than words could express, “Nothing the matter, do not flatter yourselves.” Then her expertness at general answers which give no information, completely baffled the two curious impertinents. They could only learn that the day for the marriage was not fixed, that it could not be definitively named till some business should be settled by the general. Law business they supposed, of course. Lady Cecilia “knew nothing about it. Lawyers are such provoking wretches, with their fast bind fast find. Such an unconscionable length of time as they do take for their parchment doings, heeding nought of that little impatient flapper Cupid.” Certain that Lady Cecilia was only playing with their curiosity, yet unable to circumvent her, Lady Katrine changed the conversation, and Lady Castlefort preferred a prayer, which was, she said, the chief object of her visit, that Lady Cecilia and Miss Stanley would come to her on Monday; she was to have a few friends--a very small party, and independently of the pleasure she should have in seeing them, it would be advantageous perhaps to Miss Stanley, as Lady Castlefort, in her softest voice, added, “For from the marriage being postponed even for a few days, people might talk, and Mr. Beauclerc and Miss Stanley appearing together would prevent anybody’s thinking there was any little--Nothing so proper now as for a young lady to appear with her _futur_; so I shall expect you, my dear Cecilia, and Miss Stanley,”--and so saying, she departed. Helen’s objections were all overruled, and when the engagement was made known to Beauclerc, he shrugged, and shrank, and submitted; observing, “that all men, and all women, must from the moment they come within the precincts of London life, give up their time and their will to an imaginary necessity of going when we do not like it, where we do not wish, to see those whom we have no desire to see, and who do not care if they were never to see us again, except for the sake of their own reputation of playing well their own parts in the grand farce of mock civility” Helen was sorry to have joined in making an engagement for him which he seemed so much to dislike. But Lady Cecilia, laughing, maintained that half his reluctance was affectation, and the other half a lover-like spirit of monopoly, in which he should not be indulged, and instead of pretending to be indifferent to what the world might think, he ought to be proud to show Helen as a proof of his taste.