, I consider as my first step towards affluence. I am therefore, bound to the family by gratitude, and to young Willoughby I am bound by personal friendship and esteem.

Except something too much bordering on rashness in his temper, I hardly know any man so faultless and so worthy of regard. He adores Miss De Mornay, and I am convinced the happiness of his life depends on their union. Finding him torn from her for the present, at the very moment this union was to take place, I entered at once into all the uneasiness that must have assailed him, and I voluntarily offered my protection to her, which he has since acknowledged in a letter to me to be the greatest kindness he could receive. I have promised him to continue it as long as she has occasion for it or will accept it. Do not, therefore, Montague, by any of your excentricities, make this uneasy either to her or to me. Don't fancy yourself in love with a young woman who is in fact married. Any other kind of attention or regard you shew her will oblige me; but let us have no making love, unless you would drive her away and greatly disoblige me."

The young man readily promised what at the moment he was sincere in, that he would not make love to Celestina; but he did not promise not to feel the passion, against which it was too late already to guard him. Mr. Thorold however supposed, that after this explanation there was nothing to fear from the extreme susceptibility of his younger son; and for the eldest, he was too certain that he had not a heart on which the charms and virtues of Celestina, or of any other beautiful and interesting woman, could make any permanent impression. He was easy therefore in a situation which would have made many narrow minded and selfish parents very much otherwise; and did not think the presence of his two sons at home, a sufficient reason for withdrawing his generous kindness from Celestina, to whom he was indeed affectionately attached for her own sake, to whom he loved to consider himself as a guardian and protector.

Mrs. Thorold, always busied about the intrigues and schemes of the rest of the world, saw not very minutely into those of her own family. As to her eldest son, she contemplated him as a superior being, who had a right to marry the greatest heiress of the kingdom. She heard him speak so often of Lady Marys and Lady Carolines, that she concluded he might have any of them whenever he pleased; and had set her imagination so
