 the indulgence of a fruitless passion; and sometimes he entertained a vague and distant hope that if Willoughby resigned all pretensions to the hand of Celestina, the merit and attachment of Montague might have a claim to her gratitude and her affection. But of this he gave not the most distant hint to his son, and parted with him without naming Celestina, or seeming to notice the state of his mind in regard to her.
Celestina in the mean time was journeying towards Scotland with Mrs. Elphinstone and her two little boys. As Cathcart had hired a chaise to carry them to Edinburgh,

where Elphinstone was to meet them, they travelled slowly; but as the weather was delightful, and her companion became every day more agreeable to her, Celestina was in no haste to reach the end of her journey. Every thing in this part of England was new to her; and since the fatal hour of her separation from Willoughby she had never been so calm as she now felt herself, though far enough from being happy. The oftener she read over the letters she had received from Willoughby, which were her constant companions, the more steadily she reflected on his principles and his character, more firmly she became persuaded that whatever was the cause of their separation, it was not owing to his preference of another, to idle caprice, or to any motive which should make her blush for his morals or his heart.
In this reliance on the honour of the man to whom her heart was fondly devoted, she found so much consolation, that she drove from her as resolutely as she could all those suspicions which had embittered her mind

on the information Vavasour had given her. She thought it very possible that the Castlenorths were gone abroad, because Lord Castlenorth was never well in England; and his lady, of more consequence among the English in Italy than she could be in London or even at Castlenorth, was much fonder of being looked up to there, than in being lost in the crowd of those who were of equal or superior rank at home. Their daughter too affected foreign manners and foreign sentiments; and with the figure and countenance of a coarse English female peasant, assumed sometimes the animated vivacity of the Neapolitan beauty, and sometimes the insinuating languor of the Venetian; and when in England, had very frequently declared her dislike of the people and the country, and expressed her wonder that those who could converse in any other, should use the harsh and vulgar language of the English.
That a family thus disposed should not remain in their native country, and above

all, after the mortification they must have met
