Book Ten Chapter 3 A Summons

She wrote all this intelligence to Ostend, whence she received a letter from Delvile, acquainting her he was detained from proceeding further by the weakness and illness of his mother, whose sufferings from seasickness had almost put an end to her existence.

Thus passed a miserable week; Monckton still merely alive, Delvile detained at Ostend, and Cecilia tortured alike by what was recently passed, actually present, and fearfully expected; when one morning she was told a gentleman upon business desired immediately to speak with her.

She hastily obeyed the summons; the constant image of her own mind, Delvile, being already present to her, and a thousand wild conjectures upon what had brought him back, rapidly occurring to her.

Her expectations, however, were ill answered, for she found an entire stranger; an elderly man, of no pleasant aspect or manners.

She desired to know his business.

"I presume, madam, you are the lady of this house?"

She bowed an assent.

"May I take the liberty, madam, to ask your name?'

"My name, sir?"

"You will do me a favour, madam, by telling it me."

"Is it possible you are come hither without already knowing it?"

"I know it only by common report, madam."

"Common report, sir, I believe is seldom wrong in a matter where to be right is so easy."

"Have you any objection, madam, to telling me your name?"

"No, sir; but your business can hardly be very important, if you are yet to learn whom you are to address. It will be time enough, therefore, for us to meet when you are elsewhere satisfied in this point."