
When Celestina was alone, she ran over in her thoughts the transactions of the last month, and wondered what Fate would do with her next. But not of herself alone she thought: Willoughby, unhappy and unsettled; his mind thrown from its balance by disappointment; his talents lost in the bewildering uneasiness of uncertainty, and his temper injured by the corrosive anxieties of pecuniary inconvenience; he, who had such a mind, such a heart, such talents, such a temper; who deserved every happiness, and yet had hitherto known none; Willoughby, wandering about the world to obtain confirmation of a fact, which, when known, would only complete his misery; was an object from which the thoughts of Celestina could never a moment escape: and a thousand times she wished she had never been born, since to her, to whomsoever she owed her

birth, Willoughby certainly owed his unhappiness.
It was time to consider of obeying the injunction he gave her, towards the close of his letter, to write to him; but on this subject she determined to consult Lady Horatia Howard, as well as to ask her advice in what way she should act in regard to Vavasour, whose importunities she dreaded, yet from whose visits she knew not how to disengage herself.
Under such protection, however, she knew that much of the inconvenience she must in other circumstances feel from Vavasour's behaviour would be obviated; and that the sense as well as the situation of Lady Horatia would prevent that improper familiarity which, when she was only with Cathcart or Mrs. Elphinstone, whom he looked upon as inferior and as dependent, it was too much his nature to assume.
With more complacency, she thought of Montague Thorold, and always of his father with a degree of affectionate reverence.

As to the young man, though her heart never admitted, in regard to him, the slightest tendency towards that sort of partiality which could ever grow into love, yet she had received so many marks of real and ardent attachment from him, she thought so well of his talents, and so much better of his heart, that she could never divest herself of solicitude for his welfare. Perhaps—for in what heart, however pure, does not some such weakness lurk—perhaps, the stories she had heard of his former universal propensity to form attachments, and which were intended to prejudice her against him, had an influence on her mind of which she was herself unconscious, and that her self-love, though no human being ever appeared to have less, was gratified by having thus fixed a man so volatile and unsteady,
