ingratiate himself into your favour?"

"No, never! but when treated with so much softness, 'tis hard always to
remember one's meanness! You, madam, have no notion of that task: no
more had I myself till lately, for I cared not who was high, nor who
was low: but now, indeed, I must own I have some times wished myself
richer! yet he assumes so little, that at other times, I have almost
forgot all distance between us, and even thought--Oh foolish thought!--

"Tell it, sweet Henrietta, however!"

"I will tell you, madam, every thing! for my heart has been bursting to
open itself, and nobody have I dared trust. I have thought, then, I
have sometimes thought,--my true affection, my faithful fondness, my
glad obedience,--might make him, if he did but know them, happier in me
than in a greater lady!"

"Indeed," cried Cecilia, extremely affected by this plaintive
tenderness, "I believe it--and were I him, I could not, I think,
hesitate a moment in my choice!"

Henrietta now, hearing her mother coming in, made a sign to her to be
silent; but Mrs Belfield had not been an instant in the passage, before
a thundering knocking at the street-door occasioned it to be instantly
re-opened. A servant then enquired if Mrs Belfield was at home, and
being answered by herself in the affirmative, a chair was brought into
the house.

But what was the astonishment of Cecilia, when, in another moment, she
heard from the next parlour the voice of Mr Delvile senior, saying,