"Speak, then, and with sincerity," she continued, all you wish me to
hear, and then grant 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 any merit from revealing it: I will only add, that my
consent to this transaction has made me miserable almost from the
moment I gave 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 my
last hour, must fill me with regret and shame."

"I wonder not," said Mrs Delvile, "that in a situation where delicacy
was so much less requisite than courage, Miss Beverley should feel
herself distressed and unhappy. A mind such as hers could never err
with impunity; and it is solely from a certainty of her innate sense of
right, that I venture to wait upon her now, and that I have any hope to
influence _her_ upon whose influence alone our whole family must in
future depend. Shall I now proceed, or is there any thing you wish to
say first?"

"No, madam, nothing."

"Hear me, then, I beg of you, with no predetermination to disregard me,
but with an equitable resolution to attend to reason, and a candour
that leaves an opening to conviction. Not easy, indeed, is such a task,
to a mind pre-occupied with an intention to be guided by the dictates
of inclination,---"