“This warning,” he continued, “I should not have disregarded, had I not, at the Opera, been deceived into a belief you were engaged; I then wished no longer to shun you; bound in honour to forbear all efforts at supplanting a man, to whom I thought you almost united, I considered you already as married, and eagerly as I sought your society, I sought it not with more pleasure than innocence. Yet even then, to be candid, I found in myself a restlessness about your affairs that kept me in eternal perturbation; but I flattered myself it was mere curiosity, and only excited by the perpetual change of opinion to which occasion gave rise, concerning which was the happy man.” “I am sorry,” said Cecilia, coolly, “there was any such mistake.” “I will not, madam, fatigue you,” he returned, “by tracing the progress of my unfortunate admiration; will endeavour to be more brief, for I see you are already wearied.” He stopt a moment, hoping for some little encouragement; but Cecilia, in no humour to give it, assumed an air of unconcern, and sat wholly quiet. “I knew not,” he then went on, with a look of extreme mortification, “the warmth with which I honoured your virtues, till you deigned to plead to me for Mr Belfield,--but let me not recollect the feelings of that moment!--yet were they nothing,--cold, languid, lifeless to what I afterwards experienced, when you undeceived me finally with respect to your situation, and informed me the report concerning Sir Robert Floyer was equally erroneous with that which concerned Belfield! O what was the agitation of my whole soul at that instant!--to know you disengaged,--to see you before me,--by the disorder of my whole frame to discover the mistake I had cherished--” Cecilia then, half rising, yet again seating herself, looked extremely impatient to be gone. “Pardon me, madam,” he cried; “I will have done, and trace my feelings and my sufferings no longer, but hasten, for my own sake as well as yours, to the reason why I have spoken at all. From the hour that my ill-destined passion was fully known to myself, I weighed all the consequences of indulging it, and found, added to the extreme hazard of success, an impropriety even in the attempt. My honour in the honour of my family is bound; what to that would seem wrong, in me would be unjustifiable; yet where inducements so numerous were opposed by one single objection!--where virtue, beauty, education and family were all unexceptionable,--Oh cruel clause! barbarous and repulsive clause! that forbids my aspiring to the first of women, but by an action that with my own family would degrade me for ever!”