save the poor beggar who is starving; but the fallen wretch, who will
not cringe for his support, may consume in his own wretchedness without
pity and without help!"

Cecilia now saw that the wound his sensibility had received was too
painful for argument, and too recent immediately to be healed. She
forbore, therefore, to detain him any longer, but expressing her best
wishes, without venturing to hint at her services, she arose, and they
all took their leave;--Belfield hastening, as they went, to return to
the garden, where, looking over the hedge as they passed, they saw him
employed again in weeding, with the eagerness of a man who pursues his
favourite occupation.

Cecilia half forgot her own anxieties and sadness, in the concern which
she felt for this unfortunate and extraordinary young man. She wished
much to devise some means for drawing him from a life of such hardship
and obscurity; but what to a man thus "jealous in honour," thus
scrupulous in delicacy, could she propose, without more risk of
offence, than probability of obliging? His account had, indeed,
convinced her how much he stood in need of assistance, but it had shewn
her no less how fastidious he would be in receiving it.

Nor was she wholly without fear that an earnest solicitude to serve
him, his youth, talents, and striking manners considered, might
occasion even in himself a misconstruction of her motives, such as she
already had given birth to in his forward and partial mother.

The present, therefore, all circumstances weighed, seemed no season for
her liberality, which she yet resolved to exert the first moment it was
unopposed by propriety.