 a decided object, and fixed with the most envenomed power on the heart of Willoughby. The impossibility of his interfering, to prevent Celestina giving herself to another while he himself remained in such a situation as the present, and dared not even see her; the little probability he saw of removing the doubts that distracted him; and the apprehensions least if they were for ever effectually withdrawn Celestina would rejoice that they were so; the cruel idea of Montague Thorold's possessing that heart which he once knew to be all his own, and the preference

of that elegant mind of which he had with so much delight contemplated the improvement; were thoughts that incessantly pursued and tormented him: and he had no means of obtaining any information of the conduct of Celestina, or of her return to town, but by his servant, who was now employed whole days to gather from the domestics of Lady Horatia, intelligence, which, when obtained, served only to encrease his misery.
The anecdotes he gathered from his sister served too but to aggravate his distress: yet when he saw her, (as he generally did once every day,) from whatever point the conversation sat out, it always ended in questions about Celestina: and Lady Molyneux, who had insensibly familiarised her mind to the idea of her brother's dying a bachelor in consequence of his early disappointment, now saw with concern that his attachment to Celestina, though it prevented his marrying any other, was yet so rooted in his heart, that should he find, as she believed he

would, the imagined relationship a mere fiction, he would most undoubtedly return to her with more ardour than before they were parted: and notwithstanding the embarrassed state of his affairs, which every day became more serious, would marry her, and disappoint every view of fortune—encrease of fortune—which her avaricious ambition foresaw might otherwise accrue to her.
Actuated, therefore, by very different motives, she co-operated with Lady Castlenorth in endeavouring to divide him from Celestina; and while one was strengthening the barrier raised between them, the other was trying to convince Willoughby that he ought not to wish for it's removal.
The means of doing this were, she thought, to keep him at a distance from Celestina, and to pique his pride by representing her as attached to another. The first point was for the present secured by his illness; and she took care so artfully to insinuate the second, that aided as she was by

the report of Vavasour, and by the continual repetitions of what he had seen on the journey from Scotland, that every hour the fatal
