Cecilia, Volume 3 (of 3)

ta, her eyes still red, though no longer streaming, op

be alone, yet co

orced smile, and constrained air o

ecilia, unwilling

d happen?-I am sure

prove most kind or most cruel to acquaint her with what was in agitation, which, should it terminate in nothing, was unnecessarily wounding her delicacy for the openness

ess has been so great, it may well make me forget myself: but if it does, I am sure I deserve you

you already every thing I thought you would have pleasure in hearing

behaved with the folly of a baby. I am very angry with myself indeed! I w

nxious to re-encourage her, "for all the love that I bear you

ly come now to beg you will tell me, madam, when it is to be;-and don't think I

rietta?-you are very

ten times a worse home than it is!-just exactly the day before. Because afterwards I shall never lik

ver may be my fate, I will never be so treacherou

ou, madam, o

tain

this never ha

uch distressed, "I know no

ear madam, c

nd things! nothing

I thought that it was no wonder, I am sure, for I used often to think it was just what was most likely; but after

known myself what to expect; one day has perpetually reversed the prospect of another, and my mind has bee

for I took it into my head I might tell you every thing, because I concluded it could be nothing to you; for if great people loved one another, I always supposed they married directly; poor people, inde

rankly, therefore, confessed to her the whole of her situation. Henrietta wept at the recital with bitterness, thought Mr Delvile a monster, and Mrs Delvile herself scarce human; pitied Cecilia with unaffected tenderness, and wondered that the person c

Cecilia. Though modest and humble, she had conceived hopes the most romantic, and though she denied, even to herself, any expectations from Delvile, she involuntarily nourished them with the mos

, and hastened in the utmost alarm, to learn its event. She had now lost all the pleasure she had form

g her at their pleasure, nor herself for her easiness of submission in being thus the dupe of their caprices. The subject was difficult for Cecilia to dilate upon; she wished to clear, as he deserved, Delvile himself from any share

had none to make her retract, and that the conditional promise she had given Delvile to be wh

purpose of taking leave of her, and with pretended good wishes for her happiness, whatever might be her d

nions, was glad to be relieved from useless exhortations, and not

eek, and augured nothing but evil from such de

verley. Ap

f with making any; I must write without any beginning add

compelled to leave you, and when it may

r I had received, in meeting with no other repulse to my proposal, than was owing to an inability to accede to it; and informed my mother of the condescending powers with which you had invested her. In conclusion I mentioned my new scheme, and firmly, before I would listen to any opposition, I dec

so public, will any prohibition but yours have f

s resolutions are inflexible. Who or what has worked him into an animosity so irreclaimable, I cannot

other such instance could be found of fidelity so exalted! her son must have no heart but for low and mercenary selfishness, if, after a proof of regard so

ears; he disbelieved you had taken up the money for Harrel, he discredited that you visited the Belfields for Henrietta: passion not merely

spirit of truth, and all the confidence of similar virtue! yet they parted without c

plications to both; I could not, however, succeed; my mother was deeply offended, my father was sternly inexorable: nor here rests the

rnest to set off immediately; but Dr Lyster has advised her to make Lon

ed; and we are now u

e, that I waited not something more decisive to say. I could prevail upon neither party to meet before the j

ome, I know not. If my mother bears her journey tolerably well, I have yet one more effort to make; and of that the s

mer D

le was shocking, but his slandering her character was still more intolerable; yet the praises of the mother, and her generous vindi

ould now root out her suspicions. Delvile's temper, however, she knew was too impetuous to be trusted with this conjecture, and her fear o

nuance of her suspense; and to her own fate Henrietta became somewhat more reconci