any man's I ever met with."

"It will be strange indeed," said Cecilia, "should a reconciliation
_now_ be difficult!"

"True; but it is long since he was young himself, and the softer
affections he never was acquainted with, and only regards them in his
son as derogatory to his whole race. However, if there were not some
few such men, there would hardly be a family in the kingdom that could
count a great grand-father. I am not, I must own, of his humour myself,
but I think it rather peculiarly stranger, than peculiarly worse than
most other peoples; and how, for example, was that of _your_ uncle a
whit the better? He was just as fond of _his_ name, as if, like Mr
Delvile, he could trace it from the time of the Saxons."

Cecilia strongly felt the truth of this observation, but not chusing to
discuss it, made not any answer, and Dr Lyster, after a few good-
natured apologies, both for his friends the Delviles and himself, went
up stairs.

"What continual disturbance," cried she, when left alone, "keeps me
thus for-ever from rest! no sooner is one wound closed, but another is
opened; mortification constantly succeeds distress, and when my heart
is spared; my pride is attacked, that not a moment of tranquility may
ever be allowed me! Had the lowest of women won the affections of Mr
Delvile, could his father with less delicacy or less decency have
acquainted her with his inflexible disapprobation? To send with so
little ceremony a message so contemptuous and so peremptory!--but
perhaps it is better, for had he, too, like Mrs Delvile, joined
kindness with rejection, I might still more keenly have felt the