“I am very sorry indeed!” said she, sighing again, and not seeming sensible she spoke. “Good Heaven!” cried he, rising, “distract me not with this horror!--speak not to me in such broken sentences!--Do you hear me, Cecilia?--why will you not answer me?” She started and trembled, looked pale and affrighted, and putting both her hands upon her heart, said, “Oh yes!--but I have an oppression here,--a tightness, a fulness,--I have not room for breath!” “Oh beloved of my heart!” cried he, wildly casting himself at her feet, “kill me not with this terror!--call back your faculties,--awake from this dreadful insensibility! tell me at least you know me!--tell me I have not tortured you quite to madness!--sole darling of my affections! my own, my wedded Cecilia!--rescue me from this agony! it is more than I can support!”--- This energy of distress brought back her scattered senses, scarce more stunned by the shock of all this misery, than by the restraint of her feelings in struggling to conceal it. But these passionate exclamations restoring her sensibility, she burst into tears, which happily relieved her mind from the conflict with which it was labouring, and which, not thus effected, might have ended more fatally. Never had Delvile more rejoiced in her smiles than now in these seasonable tears, which he regarded and blest as the preservers of her reason. They flowed long without any intermission, his soothing and tenderness but melting her to more sorrow: after a while, however, the return of her faculties, which at first seemed all consigned over to grief, was manifested by the returning strength of her mind: she blamed herself severely for the little fortitude she had shewn, but having now given vent to emotions too forcible to be wholly stiffed, she assured him he might depend upon her' better courage for the future, and entreated him to consider and settle his affairs. Not speedily, however, could Delvile himself recover. The torture he had suffered in believing, though only for a few moments, that the terror he had given to Cecilia had affected her intellects, made even a deeper impression upon his imagination, than the scene of fury and death, which had occasioned that terror: and Cecilia, who now strained every nerve to repair by her firmness, the pain which by her weakness she had given him, was sooner in a condition for reasoning and deliberation than himself. “Ah Delvile!” she cried, comprehending what passed within him, “do you allow nothing for surprize? and nothing for the hard conflict of endeavouring to suppress it? do you think me still as unfit to advise with, and as worthless, as feeble a counsellor, as during the first confusion of my mind?” “Hurry not your tender spirits, I beseech you,” cried he, “we have time enough; we will talk about business by and by.” “What time?” cried she, “what is it now o'clock?”