Cecilia, Or Memoirs of an Heiress Volume 3 - Page 157/249

I would fain see you ere I go, lest I should see you no more; fain ratify by word of mouth the consent that by word of mouth I so absolutely refused! I know not how to come to Suffolk,--is it not possible you can come to London? I am told you leave to me the arbitration of your fate, in giving you to my son, I best shew my sense of such an honour.

Hasten then, my love, to town, that I may see you once more! wait no longer a concurrence thus unjustly with-held, but hasten, that I may bless the daughter I have so often wished to own! that I may entreat her forgiveness for all the pain I have occasioned her, and committing to her charge the future happiness of my son, fold to my maternal heart the two objects most dear to it!

AUGUSTA DELVILE.

Cecilia wept over this letter with tenderness, grief and alarm; but declared, had it even summoned her to follow her abroad, she could not, after reading it, have hesitated in complying.

"O now, then," cried Delvile, "let our long suspenses end! hear me with the candour; my mother has already listened to me--be mine, my Cecilia, at once,--and force me not, by eternal scruples, to risk another separation."

"Good heaven, Sir!" cried Cecilia, starting, "in such a state as Mrs Delvile thinks herself, would you have her journey delayed?"

"No, not a moment! I would but ensure you mine, and go with her all over the world!"

"Wild and impossible!--and what is to be done with Mr Delvile?"

"It is on his account wholly I am thus earnestly precipitate. If I do not by an immediate marriage prevent his further interference, all I have already suffered may again be repeated, and some fresh contest 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?"