wiser, long since, to have spared your mother and ourselves, those vain
and fruitless conflicts which we ought better to have foreseen were
liable to such a conclusion. Now, at least, let them be ended, and let
us not pursue disgrace wilfully, after suffering from it with so much
rigour involuntarily."

"O no," cried Delvile, "rather let us now spurn it for ever! those
conflicts must indeed be ended, but not by a separation still more
bitter than all of them."

He then told her, that his mother, highly offended to observe by the
extreme coldness of this letter, the rancour he still nourished for the
contest preceding her leaving him, no longer now refused even her
separate consent, for a measure which she thought her son absolutely
engaged to take.

"Good heaven!" cried Cecilia, much amazed, "this from Mrs Delvile!--a
separate consent?"--

"She has always maintained," he answered, "an independent mind, always
judged for herself, and refused all other arbitration: when so
impetuously she parted us, my father's will happened to be her's, and
thence their concurrence: my father, of a temper immoveable and stern,
retains stubbornly the prejudices which once have taken possession of
him; my mother, generous as fiery, and noble as proud, is open to
conviction, and no sooner convinced, than ingenuous in acknowledging
it: and thence their dissention. From my father I may hope forgiveness,
but must never expect concession; from my mother I may hope all she
ought to grant, for pardon but her vehemence,--and she has every great
quality that can dignify human nature!"