knowledge, received all new ideas with avidity.

Pleasure given in society, like money lent in usury, returns with
interest to those who dispense it: and the discourse of Mr Monckton
conferred not a greater favour upon Cecilia than her attention to it
repaid. And thus, the speaker and the hearer being mutually
gratified, they had always met with complacency, and commonly parted
with regret.

This reciprocation of pleasure had, however, produced different
effects upon their minds; the ideas of Cecilia were enlarged, while
the reflections of Mr Monckton were embittered. He here saw an
object who to all the advantages of that wealth he had so highly
prized, added youth, beauty, and intelligence; though much her
senior, he was by no means of an age to render his addressing her an
impropriety, and the entertainment she received from his
conversation, persuaded him that her good opinion might with ease be
improved into a regard the most partial. He regretted the venal
rapacity with which he had sacrificed himself to a woman he
abhorred, and his wishes for her final decay became daily more
fervent. He knew that the acquaintance of Cecilia was confined to a
circle of which he was himself the principal ornament, that she had
rejected all the proposals of marriage which had hitherto been made
to her, and, as he had sedulously watched her from her earliest
years, he had reason to believe that her heart had escaped any
dangerous impression. This being her situation, he had long looked
upon her as his future property; as such he had indulged his
admiration, and as such he had already appropriated her estate,
though he had not more vigilantly inspected into her sentiments,
than he had guarded his own from a similar scrutiny.