"You know not then," said Cecilia, in a faint voice, "my inability to comply?"
"Your ability or inability, I presume, are elective?"
"Oh no!--my power is lost--my fortune itself is gone!"
"Impossible! utterly impossible!" cried he with vehemence.
"Oh that it were!--your father knows it but too well."
"My father!"
"Did he, then, never hint it to you?"
"Oh distraction!" cried Delvile, "what horrible confirmation is coming!" and again he walked away, as if wanting courage to hear her.
Cecilia was too much shocked to force upon him her explanation; but presently returning to her, he said, "you, only, could have made this credible!"
"Had you, then, actually heard it?"
"Oh I had heard it as the most infamous of falsehoods! my heart swelled with indignation at so villainous a calumny, and had it not come from my father, my resentment at it had been inveterate!"
"Alas!" cried Cecilia, "the fact is undeniable! yet the circumstances you may have heard with it, are I doubt not exaggerated."
"Exaggerated indeed!" he answered; "I was told you had been surprised concealed with Belfield in a back room, I was told that your parental fortune was totally exhausted, and that during your minority you had been a dealer with Jews!--I was told all this by my father; you may believe I had else not easily been made hear it!"
"Yet thus far," said she, "he told you but what is true; though--"
"True!" interrupted Delvile, with a start almost frantic. "Oh never, then, was truth so scandalously wronged!--I denied the whole charge!-I disbelieved every syllable!--I pledged my own honour to prove every assertion false!"
"Generous Delvile!" cried Cecilia, melting into tears, "this is what I expected from you! and, believe me, in your integrity my reliance had been similar!"
"Why does Miss Beverley weep?" cried he, softened, and approaching her, "and why has she given me this alarm? these things must at least have been misrepresented, deign, then, to clear up a mystery in which suspense is torture!"
Cecilia, then, with what precision and clearness her agitation allowed her, related the whole history of her taking up the money of the Jew for Mr Harrel, and told, without reserve, the reason of her trying to abscond from his father at Mrs Belfield's. Delvile listened to her account with almost an agony of attention, now admiring her conduct; now resenting her ill usage; now compassionating her losses; but though variously moved by different parts, receiving from the whole the delight he most coveted in the establishment of her innocence.
Thanks and applause the warmest, both accompanied and followed her narration; and then, at her request, he related in return the several incidents and circumstances to which he had owed the permission of this visit.