Confounded and dismayed, for a moment he continued silent, and then passionately called out, “Who has been with you to defame me in your opinion? Who has barbarously wronged my character since I left you Monday? Mr Monckton received me coldly,--has he injured me in your esteem? Tell, tell me but to whom I owe this change, that my vindication, if it restores not your favour, may at least make you cease to (missing words) that once I was honoured with some share of it!” “It wants not to be restored,” said Cecilia, with much softness, “since it has never been alienated. Be satisfied that I think of you as I thought when we last parted, and generously forbear to reproach me, when I assure you I am actuated by principles which you ought not to disapprove.” “And are you then, unchanged?” cried he, more gently, “and is your esteem for me still--” “I thought it justice to say so once,” cried she, hastily interrupting him, “but exact from me nothing more. It is too late for us now to talk any longer; to-morrow you may find my letter at Mrs Robert's, and that, short as it is, contains my resolution and its cause.” “Never,” cried he vehemently, “can I quit you without knowing it! I would not linger till to-morrow in this suspence to be master of the universe!” “I have told it you, Sir, already; whatever is clandestine carries a consciousness of evil, and so repugnant do I find it to my disposition and opinions, that till you give me back the promise I so unworthily made, I must be a stranger to peace, because at war with my own actions and myself.” “Recover, then, your peace,” cried Delvile with much emotion, “for I here acquit you of all promise!--to fetter, to compel you, were too inhuman to afford me any happiness. Yet hear me, dispassionately hear me, and deliberate a moment before you resolve upon my exile. Your scruples I am not now going to combat, I grieve that they are so powerful, but I have no new arguments with which to oppose them; all I have to say, is, that it is now too late for a retreat to satisfy them.” “True, Sir, and far too true! yet is it always best to do right, however tardily; always better to repent, than to grow callous in wrong.” “Suffer not, however, your delicacy for my family to make you forget what is due to yourself as well as to me; the fear of shocking you led me just now to conceal what a greater fear now urges me to mention. The honour I have had in view is already known to many, and in a very short time there are none will be ignorant of it. That impudent young man, Morrice, had the effrontery to rally me upon my passion for you, and though I reproved him with great asperity, he followed me into a coffee-house, whither I went merely to avoid him. There I forced myself to stay, till I saw him engaged with a news-paper, and then, through various private streets and alleys, I returned hither; but judge my indignation, when the moment I knocked at the door, I perceived him again at my side!”