"Indeed, sir, I don't know!" cried Mary.
"I assure you, sir," said Mrs Wyers, "the lady--"
"Peace!" cried he, furiously, "I will not hear your falsehoods!-- peace, and begone!"-Then, casting himself upon the ground by her side, "Oh my Cecilia," he cried, "where hast thou been thus long? how have I lost thee? what dreadful calamity has befallen thee?--answer me, my love! raise your sweet head and answer me!--oh speak!--say to me any thing; the bitterest words will be mercy to this silence!"--Cecilia then, suddenly looking up, called out with great quickness, "Who are you?"
"Who am I!" cried he, amazed and affrighted.
"I should be glad you would go away," cried she, in a hurrying manner, "for you are quite unknown to me."
Delvile, unconscious of her insanity, and attributing to resentment this aversion and repulse, hastily moved from her, mournfully answering, "Well indeed may you disclaim me, refuse all forgiveness, load me with hatred and reproach, and consign me to eternal anguish! I have merited severer punishment still; I have behaved like a monster, and I am abhorrent to myself!"
Cecilia now, half rising, and regarding him with mingled terror and anger, eagerly exclaimed, "If you do not mean to mangle and destroy me, begone this instant."
"To mangle you!" repeated Delvile, shuddering, "how horrible!--but I deserve it!--look not, however, so terrified, and I will tear myself away from you. Suffer me but to assist in removing you from this place, and I will only watch you at a distance, and never see you more till you permit me to approach you."
"Why, why," cried Cecilia, with a look of perplexity and impatience, "will you not tell me your name, and where you come from?"
"Do you not know me?" said he, struck with new horror; "or do you only mean to kill me by the question?"
"Do you bring me any message from Mr Monckton?"
"From Mr Monckton?--no; but he lives and will recover."
"I thought you had been Mr Monckton yourself."
"Too cruel, yet justly cruel Cecilia!--is then Delvile utterly renounced?--the guilty, the unhappy Delvile!--is he cast off for ever? have you driven him wholly from your heart? do you deny him even a place in your remembrance?"
"Is your name, then, Delvile?"
"O what is it you mean? is it me or my name you thus disown?"
"'Tis a name," cried she, sitting up, "I well remember to have heard, and once I loved it, and three times I called upon it in the dead of night. And when I was cold and wretched, I cherished it; and when I was abandoned and left alone, I repeated it and sung to it."