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"Talk not, madam, of me," cried the unhappy Cecilia, "what you say of your son is sufficient, and I will yield---"

"Yet hear me," proceeded she, "and believe me not so unjust as to consider hih a less stormy sufferer You fancy, at this moment, that once more to meet him would soothe your uneasiness, and that to take of him a farewell, would soften the pain of the separation: how false such reasoning! how dangerous such consolation! acquainted ere you meet that you were to rief, and at the very moment when tenderness should be banished fro upon every word, because every ould seem the last, every look, every expression would be rivetted in yourdistress would-be painted upon your mind, in colours that would eat into its peace, and perhaps never be erased"

"Enough, enough," said Cecilia, "I will not see him,--I will not even desire it!"

"Is this compliance or conviction? Is what I have said true, or only terrifying?"

"Both, both! I believe, indeed, the conflict would have overpoweredhter ofher, "noble, generous, yet gentle Cecilia! what tie, what connection, could make you more dear to me? Who is there like you? Who half so excellent? So open to reason, so ingenuous in error! so rational! so just! so feeling, yet so wise!"

"You are very good," said Cecilia, with a forced serenity, "and I am thankful that your resentment for the past obstructs not your lenity for the present"

Alas, ht myself to have foreseen this calamity! and I should have foreseen it, had I not been inforement built our security Else had I been more alarmed, for my own admiration would have bid me look forward to my son's You were just, indeed, the woman he had least chance to resist, you were precisely the character to seize his very soul To a softness the nity which rescues from their own contempt even the most humble of your admirers You seem born to have all the world wish your exaltation, and no part of it murmur at your superiority Were any obstacle but this insuperable one in the way, should nobles, nay, should princes offer their daughters to nificent proposals, and take in triumph to my heart my son's nobler choice!"