Cecilia, superior to accepting a palliation of which she felt herself undeserving, now lifted up her head, and forcing herself to speak, said “No, madam, I will not deceive you, for I have never been deceived myself: I presumed not to expect your approbation,--though in missing it I have for ever lost my own!” “Has Mortimer, then,” cried she with eagerness, “been strictly honourable? has he neither beguiled nor betrayed you?” “No, madam,” said she, blushing, “I have nothing to reproach him with.” “Then he is indeed my son!” cried Mrs Delvile, with emotion; “had he been treacherous to you, while disobedient to us, I had indisputably renounced him.” Cecilia, who now seemed the only culprit, felt herself in a state of humiliation not to be borne; she collected, therefore, all her courage, and said, “I have cleared Mr Delvile; permit me, madam, now, to say something for myself.” “Certainly; you cannot oblige me more than by speaking without disguise.” “It is not in the hope of regaining your good opinion,--that, I see, is lost!--but merely--” “No, not lost,” said Mrs Delvile, “but if once it was yet higher, the fault was my own, in indulging an expectation of perfection to which human nature is perhaps unequal.” Ah, then, thought Cecilia, all is over! the contempt I so much feared is incurred, and though it may be softened, it can never be removed! “Speak, then, and with sincerity,” she continued, “all you wish me to hear, and then grant me your attention in return to the purpose of my present journey.” “I have little, madam,” answered the depressed Cecilia, “to say; you tell me you already know all that has past; I will not, therefore, pretend to take any merit from revealing it: I will only add, that my consent to this transaction has made me miserable almost from the moment I gave it; that I meant and wished to retract as soon as reflection pointed out to me my error, and that circumstances the most perverse, not blindness to propriety, nor stubbornness in wrong, led me to make, at last, that fatal attempt, of which the recollection, to my last hour, must fill me with regret and shame.” “I wonder not,” said Mrs Delvile, “that in a situation where delicacy was so much less requisite than courage, Miss Beverley should feel herself distressed and unhappy. A mind such as hers could never err with impunity; and it is solely from a certainty of her innate sense of right, that I venture to wait upon her now, and that I have any hope to influence _her_ upon whose influence alone our whole family must in future depend. Shall I now proceed, or is there any thing you wish to say first?” “No, madam, nothing.” “Hear me, then, I beg of you, with no predetermination to disregard me, but with an equitable resolution to attend to reason, and a candour that leaves an opening to conviction. Not easy, indeed, is such a task, to a mind pre-occupied with an intention to be guided by the dictates of inclination,---”