doing?”      

       Cecilia turned away from him in silence. The shock she had received, took from her all power of speech, while amazement and terror deprived her even of relief from tears. She believed Delvile to blame, though she knew not in what, but the obscurity of her fears served only to render them more dreadful.     

       She was now getting into the coach herself, but Delvile, who could neither brook her displeasure, nor endure her departure, forcibly caught her hand, and called out, “You are mine, you are my wife!—I will part with you no more, and go whithersoever you will, I will follow and claim you!”      

       “Stop me not!” cried she, impatiently though faintly, “I am sick, I am ill already,—if you detain me any longer, I shall be unable to support myself!”      

       “Oh then rest on me!” cried he, still holding her; “rest but upon me till the ceremony is over!—you will drive me to despair and to madness if you leave me in this barbarous manner!”      

       A crowd now began to gather, and the words bride and bridegroom reached the ears of Cecilia; who half dead with shame, with fear, and with distress, hastily said “You are determined to make me miserable!” and snatching away her hand, which Delvile at those words could no longer hold, she threw herself into the carriage.     

       Delvile, however, jumped in after her, and with an air of authority ordered the coachman to Pall-Mall, and then drew up the glasses, with a look of fierceness at the mob.     

       Cecilia had neither spirits nor power to resist him; yet, offended by his violence, and shocked to be thus publickly pursued by him, her looks spoke a resentment far more mortifying than any verbal reproach.     

       “Inhuman Cecilia!” cried he, passionately, “to desert me at the very altar!—to cast me off at the instant the most sacred rites were uniting us!—and then thus to look at me!—to treat me with this disdain at a time of such distraction!—to scorn me thus injuriously at the moment you unjustly abandon me!”      

       “To how dreadful a scene,” said Cecilia, recovering from her consternation, “have you exposed me! to what shame, what indignity, what irreparable disgrace!”    

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