There was a delicacy in this reproach exactly suited to work upon
Belfield, who feeling it with quickness, started up, and cried, "I
believe I am wrong!--I will go to them this moment!"

Cecilia felt eager to second the generous impulse; but Mr Monckton,
laughing at his impetuosity, insisted he should first finish his
breakfast.

"Your friends," said Cecilia, "can have no mortification so hard to
bear as your voluntary absence; and if they see but that you are happy,
they will soon be reconciled to whatever situation you may chuse."

"Happy!" repeated he, with animation, "Oh I am in Paradise! I am come
from a region in the first rude state of nature, to civilization and
refinement! the life I led at the cottage was the life of a savage; no
intercourse with society, no consolation from books; my mind locked up,
every source dried of intellectual delight, and no enjoyment in my
power but from sleep and from food. Weary of an existence which thus
levelled me with a brute, I grew ashamed of the approximation, and
listening to the remonstrance of my understanding, I gave up the
precipitate plan, to pursue one more consonant to reason. I came to
town, hired a room, and sent for pen, ink and paper: what I have
written are trifles, but the Bookseller has not rejected them. I was
settled, therefore, in a moment, and comparing my new occupation with
that I had just quitted, I seemed exalted on the sudden from a mere
creature of instinct, to a rational and intelligent being. But when
first I opened a book, after so long an abstinence from all mental
nourishment,--Oh it was rapture! no half-famished beggar regaled
suddenly with food, ever seized on his repast with more hungry
avidity."