here,--a tightness, a fulness,--I have not room for breath!"

"Oh beloved of my heart!" cried he, wildly casting himself at her feet,
"kill me not with this terror!--call back your faculties,--awake from
this dreadful insensibility! tell me at least you know me!--tell me I
have not tortured you quite to madness!--sole darling of my affections!
my own, my wedded Cecilia!--rescue me from this agony! it is more than
I can support!"---

This energy of distress brought back her scattered senses, scarce more
stunned by the shock of all this misery, than by the restraint of her
feelings in struggling to conceal it. But these passionate exclamations
restoring her sensibility, she burst into tears, which happily relieved
her mind from the conflict with which it was labouring, and which, not
thus effected, might have ended more fatally.

Never had Delvile more rejoiced in her smiles than now in these
seasonable tears, which he regarded and blest as the preservers of her
reason. They flowed long without any intermission, his soothing and
tenderness but melting her to more sorrow: after a while, however, the
return of her faculties, which at first seemed all consigned over to
grief, was manifested by the returning strength of her mind: she blamed
herself severely for the little fortitude she had shewn, but having now
given vent to emotions too forcible to be wholly stiffed, she assured
him he might depend upon her' better courage for the future, and
entreated him to consider and settle his affairs.

Not speedily, however, could Delvile himself recover. The torture he
had suffered in believing, though only for a few moments, that the
terror he had given to Cecilia had affected her intellects, made even a