 see, and from thence to the Archipelago, he breathed freer, and felt himself more reconciled to existence.
He journeyed, however, slowly towards London while these debates were carrying on: and at York, whither he had ordered his letters to be directed, he found one from Cathcart which related some circumstances in regard to his affairs that convinced him he could not, unless to the material injury of some persons who were connected with him, quit England without some regulation of those pecuniary concerns which he had so long neglected and would now willingly have escaped from. This letter determined him to return to

London; though another letter from his sister, in which she mentioned, as an article of news, that Celestina was either actually married to Montague Thorold or on the point of being so, threw him into a state of mind bordering on distraction: reason, which had long fruitlessly contended against this fatal, and perhaps guilty attachment, now seemed tired of a contention so hopeless, and his mind became a chaos of conflicting passions, all equally destructive to his mental and bodily health.
To return to London, however, was become necessary; and Farnham, his old faithful servant, persuaded him to take post chaises for the rest of his journey. He arrived, after an absence of above three weeks, at the house of Lady Molyneux; and there heard, that a few days before, Lady Horatia Howard had publicly spoken of Celestina's marriage with the young divine as a settled thing; that his father had bought for him a considerable living in Gloucestershire, where they were to reside,

and where a curate was settled till he was himself qualified to take it; and thither, as there was a very good house upon it, they were going immediately after their marriage. Willoughby heard all this without being able to make any reply, and then hastened to his own lodgings, from whence he dispatched Farnham for intelligence from the servants of Lady Horatia. The coachman, with whom he had some time before made an acquaintance and who was a very talkative fellow, immediately informed him of all he knew, and much that he imagined. He said it was very true, that Mr. Thorold lived almost always at their house, "and my Lady," said the man—"my Lady loves him for all the world as if he was her own son. There they are all morning reading play books and, such together, as my fellow servants tell me, that is, my Lady and Miss and this here young divine as is to be; and then they goes out in my
