with my mother may occasion another relapse."

Cecilia, who now understood him, ardently protested she would not
listen for a moment to any clandestine expedient.

He besought her to be patient; and then anxiously represented to her
their peculiar situations. All application to his father he was
peremptorily forbid making, all efforts to remove his prejudices their
impenetrable mystery prevented; a public marriage, therefore, with such
obstacles, would almost irritate him to phrenzy, by its daring defiance
of his prohibition and authority.

"Alas!" exclaimed Cecilia, "we can never do right but in parting!"

"Say it not," cried he, "I conjure you! we shall yet live, I hope, to
prove the contrary." "And can you, then," cried she, reproachfully, "Oh
Mr Delvile! can you again urge me to enter your family in secret?"

"I grieve, indeed," he answered, "that your goodness should so severely
be tried; yet did you not condescend to commit the arbitration to my
mother?"

"True; and I thought her approbation would secure my peace of mind; but
how could I have expected Mrs Delvile's consent to such a scheme!"

"She has merely accorded it from a certainty there is no other
resource. Believe me, therefore, my whole hope rests upon your present
compliance. My father, I am certain, by his letter, will now hear
neither petition nor defence; on the contrary, he will only enrage at
the temerity of offering to confute him. But when he knows you are his