"That you wholly give me up?" interrupted Delvile, "is that what you would say?--Oh how have I offended you? how have I merited a displeasure that can draw upon me such a sentence?--Answer, speak to me, Cecilia, what is it I have done?"
"Nothing, Sir," said Cecilia, confounded at this language in the presence of his mother, "you have done nothing,--but yet--"
"Yet what?--have you conceived to me an aversion? has any dreadful and horrible antipathy succeeded to your esteem?--tell, tell me without disguise, do you hate, do you abhor me?"
Cecilia sighed, and turned away her head; and Mrs Delvile indignantly exclaimed, "What madness and absurdity! I scarce know you under the influence of such irrational violence. Why will you interrupt Miss Beverley in the only speech you ought to hear from her? Why, at once, oppress her, and irritate me, by words of more passion than reason? Go on, charming girl, finish what so wisely, so judiciously you were beginning, and then you shall be released from this turbulent persecution."
"No, madam, she must not go on!" cried Delvile, "if she does not utterly abhor me, I will not suffer her to go on;--Pardon, pardon me, Cecilia, but your too exquisite delicacy is betraying not only my happiness, but your own. Once more, therefore, I conjure you to hear me, and then if, deliberately and unbiassed, you renounce me, I will never more distress you by resisting your decree."
Cecilia, abashed and changing colour, was silent, and he proceeded.
"All that has past between us, the vows I have offered you of faith, constancy and affection, the consent I obtained from you to be legally mine, the bond of settlement I have had drawn up, and the high honour you conferred upon me in suffering me to lead you to the altar,--all these particulars are already known to so many, that the least reflection must convince you they will soon be concealed from none: tell me, then, if your own fame pleads not for me, and if the scruples which lead you to refuse, by taking another direction, will not, with much more propriety, urge, nay enjoin you to accept me!--You hesitate at least,--O Miss Beverley!--I see in that hesitation--"
"Nothing, nothing!" cried she, hastily, and checking her rising irresolution; "there is nothing for you to see, but that every way I now turn I have rendered myself miserable!"
"Mortimer," said Mrs Delvile, seized with terror as she penetrated into the mental yielding of Cecilia, "you have now spoken to Miss Beverley; and unwilling as I am to obtrude upon her our difference of sentiment, it is necessary, since she has heard you, that I, also, should claim her attention."