He then abruptly retreated, and ran out of the house.

Cecilia for a while remained almost stupified with sorrow; she forgot
Mrs Delvile, she forgot Mrs Charlton, she forgot her own design of
apologizing to one, or assisting the other: she continued in the
posture in which he had left her, quite without motion, and almost
without sensibility.



CHAPTER vii.

A MESSAGE.

From this lethargy of sadness Cecilia was soon, however, awakened by
the return of the surgeon, who had brought with him a physician to
consult upon Mrs Delvile's situation. Terror for the mother once more
drove the son from her thoughts, and she waited with the most
apprehensive impatience to hear the result of the consultation. The
physician declined giving any positive opinion, but, having written a
prescription, only repeated the injunction of the surgeon, that she
should be kept extremely quiet, and on no account be suffered to talk.

Cecilia, though shocked and frightened at the occasion, was yet by no
means sorry at an order which thus precluded all conversation; unfitted
for it by her own misery, she was glad to be relieved from all
necessity of imposing upon herself the irksome task of finding subjects
for discourse to which she was wholly indifferent, while obliged with
sedulity to avoid those by which alone her mind was occupied.