wish is the secret certainty I cannot be robbed of you, that no cruel
machinations may again work our separation, that you are mine,
unalterably mine, beyond the power of caprice or ill fortune."

Cecilia made no answer; tortured with irresolution, she knew not upon
what to determine.

"We might then, according to the favour or displeasure of my father,
settle wholly abroad for the present, or occasionally visit him in
England; my mother would be always and openly our friend--Oh be firm,
then, I conjure you, to the promise you have given her, and deign to be
mine on the conditions she prescribes. She will be bound to you for
ever by so generous a concession, and even her health may be restored
by the cessation of her anxieties. With such a wife, such a mother,
what will be wanting for _me_! Could I lament not being richer, I must
be rapacious indeed!--Speak, then, my Cecilia! relieve me from the
agony of this eternal uncertainty, and tell me your word is invariable
as your honour, and tell me my mother gives not her sanction in vain!"

Cecilia sighed deeply, but, after some hesitation, said, "I little knew
what I had promised, nor know I now what to perform!--there must ever,
I find, be some check to human happiness! yet, since upon these terms,
Mrs Delvile herself is content to wish me of her family--"

She stopt; but, urged earnestly by Delvile, added "I must not, I think,
withdraw the powers with which I entrusted her."

Delvile, grateful and enchanted, now forgot his haste and his business,
and lost every wish but to re-animate her spirits: she compelled him,
however, to leave her, that his visit might less be wondered at, and