them. To Mr Monckton therefore, innocently considering him as a
married man and her old friend, she frankly told her distress, adding,
by way of excuse for the hint, that the partners were to be changed
every two dances.

Mr Monckton, though his principal study was carefully to avoid all
public gallantry or assiduity towards Cecilia, had not the forbearance
to resist this intimation, and therefore she had the pleasure of
telling Sir Robert, when he asked the honour of her hand for the two
first dances, that she was already engaged.

She then expected that he would immediately secure her for the two
following; but, to her great joy, he was so much piqued by the evident
pleasure with which she announced her engagement, that he proudly
walked away without adding another word.

Much satisfied with this arrangement, and not without hopes that, if
she was at liberty when he arrived, she might be applied to by young
Delvile, she now endeavoured to procure herself a place in the music
room.

This, with some difficulty, she effected; but though there was an
excellent concert, in which several capital performers played and
sung, she found it impossible to hear a note, as she chanced to be
seated just by Miss Leeson, and two other young ladies, who were
paying one another compliments upon their dress and their looks,
settling to dance in the same cotillon, guessing who would begin the
minuets, and wondering there were not more gentlemen. Yet, in the
midst of this unmeaning conversation, of which she remarked that Miss
Leeson bore the principal part, not one of them failed, from time to