“No, not a moment! I would but ensure you mine, and go with her all over the world!” “Wild and impossible!--and what is to be done with Mr Delvile?” “It is on his account wholly I am thus earnestly precipitate. If I do not by an immediate marriage prevent his further interference, all I have already suffered may again be repeated, and some fresh contest with my mother may occasion another relapse.” Cecilia, who now understood him, ardently protested she would not listen for a moment to any clandestine expedient. He besought her to be patient; and then anxiously represented to her their peculiar situations. All application to his father he was peremptorily forbid making, all efforts to remove his prejudices their impenetrable mystery prevented; a public marriage, therefore, with such obstacles, would almost irritate him to phrenzy, by its daring defiance of his prohibition and authority. “Alas!” exclaimed Cecilia, “we can never do right but in parting!” “Say it not,” cried he, “I conjure you! we shall yet live, I hope, to prove the contrary.” “And can you, then,” cried she, reproachfully, “Oh Mr Delvile! can you again urge me to enter your family in secret?” “I grieve, indeed,” he answered, “that your goodness should so severely be tried; yet did you not condescend to commit the arbitration to my mother?” “True; and I thought her approbation would secure my peace of mind; but how could I have expected Mrs Delvile's consent to such a scheme!” “She has merely accorded it from a certainty there is no other resource. Believe me, therefore, my whole hope rests upon your present compliance. My father, I am certain, by his letter, will now hear neither petition nor defence; on the contrary, he will only enrage at the temerity of offering to confute him. But when he knows you are his daughter, his honour will then be concerned in yours, and it will be as much his desire to have it cleared, as it is now to have it censured.” “Wait at least your return, and let us try what can be done with him.” “Oh why,” cried Delvile, with much earnestness, “must I linger out month after month in this wretched uncertainty! If I wait I am undone! my father, by the orders I must unavoidably leave, will discover the preparations making without his consent, and he will work upon you in my absence, and compel you to give me up!” “Are you sure,” said she, half smiling, “he would have so much power?” “I am but too sure, that the least intimation, in his present irritable state of mind, reaching him of my intentions, would make him not scruple, in his fury, pronouncing some malediction upon my disobedience that _neither_ of us, I must own, could tranquilly disregard.” This was an argument that came home to Cecilia, whose deliberation upon it, though silent, was evidently not unfavourable.