He hesitated, a little embarrassed; but then suddenly exclaimed, “Yet whence, if to _neither_ favourable, if indifferent alike to Sir Robert and to Belfield, whence that animated apprehension for their safety at the Opera-house? whence that never to be forgotten _oh stop him! good God! will nobody stop him!_--Words of anxiety so tender! and sounds that still vibrate in my ear!” Cecilia, struck with amazement in her turn at the strength of his own expressions, blushed, and for a few minutes hesitated how to answer him: but then, to leave nothing that related to so disagreeable a report in any doubt, she resolved to tell him ingenuously the circumstances that had occasioned her alarm: and therefore, though with some pain to her modesty, she confessed her fears that she had herself provoked the affront, though her only view had been to discountenance Sir Robert, without meaning to shew any distinction to Mr Belfield. Delvile, who seemed charmed with the candour of this explanation, said, when she had finished it, “You are then at liberty?---Ah madam!--how many may rue so dangerous a discovery!” “Could you think,” said Cecilia, endeavouring to speak with her usual ease, “that Sir Robert Floyer would be found so irresistible?” “Oh no!” cried he, “far otherwise; a thousand times I have wondered at his happiness; a thousand times, when I have looked at you, and listened to you, I have thought it impossible!--yet my authority seemed indisputable. And how was I to discredit what was not uttered as a conjecture, but asserted as a fact? asserted, too, by the guardian with whom you lived? and not hinted as a secret, but affirmed as a point settled?” “Yet surely,” said Cecilia, “you have heard me make use of expressions that could not but lead you to suppose there was some mistake, whatever might be the authority which had won your belief.” “No,” answered he, “I never supposed any mistake, though sometimes I thought you repented your engagement. I concluded, indeed, you had been unwarily drawn in, and I have even, at times, been tempted to acknowledge my suspicions to you, state your independence, and exhort you--as a _friend_, exhort you--to use it with spirit, and, if you were shackled unwillingly, incautiously, or unworthily, to break the chains by which you were confined, and restore to yourself that freedom of choice upon the use of which all your happiness must ultimately depend. But I doubted if this were honourable to the Baronet,--and what, indeed, was my right to such a liberty? none that every man might not be proud of, a wish to do honour to myself, under the officious pretence of serving the most amiable of women.” “Mr Harrel,” said Cecilia, “has been so strangely bigoted to his friend, that in his eagerness to manifest his regard for him, he seems to have forgotten every other consideration; he would not, else, have spread so widely a report that could so ill stand enquiry.”