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Delvile, who seemed charmed with the candour of this explanation, said, when she had finished it, "You are then at liberty?---Ah erous a discovery!"

"Could you think," said Cecilia, endeavouring to speak with her usual ease, "that Sir Robert Floyer would be found so irresistible?"

"Oh no!" cried he, "far otherwise; a thousand times I have wondered at his happiness; a thousand times, when I have looked at you, and listened to you, I have thought it impossible!--yet my authority seemed indisputable And hoas I to discredit as not uttered as a conjecture, but asserted as a fact? asserted, too, by the guardian hom you lived? and not hinted as a secret, but affirmed as a point settled?"

"Yet surely," said Cecilia, "you have heard me make use of expressions that could not but lead you to suppose there was soht be the authority which had won your belief"

"No," answered he, "I never supposed any ement I concluded, indeed, you had been unwarily drawn in, and I have even, at tie my suspicions to you, state your independence, and exhort you--as a friend, exhort you--to use it with spirit, and, if you were shackled unwillingly, incautiously, or unworthily, to break the chains by which you were confined, and restore to yourself that freedom of choice upon the use of which all your happiness must ultimately depend But I doubted if this were honourable to the Baronet,--and what, indeed, was ht not be proud of, a wish to do honour tothe most amiable of wooted to his friend, that in his eagerness to otten every other consideration; he would not, else, have spread so widely a report that could so ill stand enquiry"

"If Sir Robert," returned he, "is himself deceived while he deceives others, who can forbear to pity hi that hitherto I have been ht I not rather to bless an error that er?"

Cecilia, distressed in what an noish the return of Mr Delvile; and, not knohat else to say, she expressed her surprise at his long absence

"It is not, indeed, well ti Delvile, "just now,--at the erous interval!" he arose from his seat in manifest disorder