experiment, and felt an internal assurance of success.

This matter being finally settled with his mother, the harder task
remained of vanquishing the father, by whom, and before whom the name
of Cecilia was never mentioned, not even after his return from town,
though loaded with imaginary charges against her. Mr Delvile held it a
diminution of his own in the honour of his son, to suppose he wanted
still fresh motives for resigning her. He kept, therefore, to himself
the ill opinion he brought down, as a resource in case of danger, but a
resource he disdained to make use of, unless driven to it by absolute
necessity.

But, at the new proposal of his son, the accusation held in reserve
broke out; he called Cecilia a dabler with Jews, and said she had been
so from the time of her uncle's death; he charged her with the grossest
general extravagance, to which he added a most insidious attack upon
her character, drawn from her visits at Belfield's of long standing, as
well as the particular time when he had himself surprised her concealed
with the young man in a back parlour: and he asserted, that most of the
large sums she was continually taking up from her fortune, were
lavished without scruple upon this dangerous and improper favourite.

Delvile had heard this accusation with a rage scarce restrained from
violence; confident in her innocence, he boldly pronounced the whole a
forgery, and demanded the author of such cruel defamation. Mr Delvile,
much offended, refused to name any authority, but consented, with an
air of triumph, to abide by the effect of his own proposal, and gave
him a supercilious promise no longer to oppose the marriage, if the
terms he meant to offer to Miss Beverley, of renouncing her uncle's
estate, and producing her father's fortune, were accepted.