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Mrs Delvile then seated herself next her, and gravely continued her discourse

"Miss Beverley, however little acquainted with the state of our family affairs, can scarcely have been uninformed that a fortune such as hers seems almost all that family can desire; nor can she have failed to observe, that her merit and accomplishments have no where been more felt and admired: the choice therefore of Mortimer she could not doubt would have our sanction, and when she honoured his proposals with her favour, she ave happiness and pleasure to all his friends"

Cecilia, superior to accepting a palliation of which she felt herself undeserving, now lifted up her head, and forcing herself to speak, said "No, madam, I will not deceive you, for I have never been deceived h init I have for ever lost erness, "been strictly honourable? has he neither beguiled nor betrayed you?"

"No,to reproach him with"

"Then he is indeed my son!" cried Mrs Delvile, with emotion; "had he been treacherous to you, while disobedient to us, I had indisputably renounced him"

Cecilia, who now seemed the only culprit, felt herself in a state of humiliation not to be borne; she collected, therefore, all her courage, and said, "I have cleared Mr Delvile; per for e uise"

"It is not in the hope of regaining your good opinion,--that, I see, is lost!--but merely--"

"No, not lost," said Mrs Delvile, "but if once it was yet higher, the fault wasan expectation of perfection to which huht Cecilia, all is over! the conteh it may be softened, it can never be removed!

"Speak, then, and with sincerity," she continued, all you wish rant me your attention in return to the purpose of my present journey"

"I have little, madam," answered the depressed Cecilia, "to say; you tell me you already know all that has past; I will not, therefore, pretend to take anyit: I will only add, that my consent to this transaction has ave it; that I meant and wished to retract as soon as reflection pointed out to me my error, and that circumstances the most perverse, not blindness to propriety, nor stubbornness in wrong, led me to make, at last, that fatal attempt, of which the recollection, to ret and shame"