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Cecilia made no answer; she was more and htful?" said he, with tenderness; "are you unhappy?-- sweetest Cecilia! most excellent of human creatures! if I have made you unhappy--and I must!--it is inevitable!--"

"Oh Delvile!" cried she, now assue, "ill you not speak to ; may I not hear it?has distressed you?"

"You are too good!" cried he; "to deserve you is not possible, but to afflict you is inhuman!" "Why so?" cried she, more chearfully; "must I not share the common lot? or expect the whole world to be newbut happiness?"

"There is not, indeed, ht the to in a letter myself"

"To me?" cried she

He made no answer, but took up the pen, and wrote a feords, and then, flinging it down, said, "Fool!--I could have done this without co he made no opposition, advanced and read

I fear to alar suspense,--but all is not well-"Fear nothing!" cried she, turning to him with the kindest earnestness; "tell me, whatever it may be!--Am I not your wife? bound by every tie divine and human to share in all your sorrows, if, unhappily, I cannot ratefully, "so sweet a claim, a claiiving me, will make all others nearly immaterial to me,--I will own to you that all, indeed, is not well! I have been hasty,--you will blame me; I deserve, indeed, to be blae, resento what I owed to such a deposite!--If your blame, however, stops short of repentance-- but it cannot!"

"What, then," cried she armth, "must you have done? for there is not an action of which I believe you capable, there is not an event which I believe to be possible, that can everto you wholly!"

"Generous, condescending Cecilia!" cried he; "Words such as these, hung there not upon , would be almost more than I could bear--would make me too blest for mortality!"