 the first moment she saw him; and his indifference, his preference of Celestina, and even his positively declining the honour of her hand, had mortified without curing her of her partiality; though resentment and disdain were mingled with the inclination she could not conquer, and which neither his absence nor his coldness. had prevented from gaining on her heart. When she saw him again, new force was given to this passion: he was less handsome, less animated; but more interesting and more pleasing; while his melancholy and dejection, though created by another object, gave him so many charms in the opinion

of Miss Fitz-Hayman, that her pride yielded to them; and as it was now very certain that he had no attachment but to Celestina, whom, since she fully believed their relationship, she knew he never could marry, she doubted not of being able to inspire him with an affection for her, and, in returning to England his wife, of fulfilling at once her parents wishes and her own.
Lady Castlenorth, whose love of intrigue time had by no means diminished, and whose arrogance had been deeply wounded by the failure of her original plan, which she fancied Willoughby would with so much eagerness have embraced, was now doubly anxious to avail herself of the advantage she had gained by having prevented the intended union of Willoughby and Celestina. Pique and resentment operated upon her mind with even more force than attachment and regard would have on another. Besides, in the marriage of her daughter with any man of superior rank

and independent fortune, she found great probability that her influence would be lessened and her government disclaimed; but in uniting her daughter with Willoughby, whose fortune was in disorder and whose temper was remarkably easy, she foresaw the continuation of her power, and that she should neither see her daughter take place of her, or escape from her influence.
Whatever was the wish of her friends, the assiduous Mrs. Calder officiously adopted; and when she found how much Lord Castlenorth had set his heart on concluding the marriage between his daughter and her nephew, she applied all her rhetoric to prove its advantages, and all her art to secure it's success.
Willoughby was unconscious of the plans that were thus forming in the family of his uncle, and did not think it possible that their pride would allow them to solicit again an alliance which he had once declined: he therefore went to them without any apprehension that he was encouraging expectations

he never meant to fulfil, and had indeed no other design than to lay in wait for traces of that involved mystery, which he
