 had he married you, would have passed a life as blameable? You have told me that he was passionately attached to you: you now say, that to the lady he married he was indifferent: surely to that may be imputed all his errors.—His mind became unhinged when he lost her to whom it was devoted, and he aggravated himself the cruelty of his destiny. To you

he might have been an excellent husband, because he loved you; but losing the possibility of being happy, he lost the wish to be respectable; and since he could not live with you, cared not with whom or how he lived."
"There may be some truth," said Lady Horatia, "in your remarks; but to be tolerably easy, Celestina, in this world, you must learn to be more of an Optimist; and to believe, that whatever happens, could not, nor ought not to have been otherwise. Thus the interference of Lady Castlenorth, whatever might have been her motives, has saved you from a marriage that might have been a hideous crime; thus, not to enumerate other instances that must occur to your recollection; thus, the wild brutality of Vavasour, and even the wound of Montague, will all contribute finally to good, and produce that happiness for you with him, which I do not believe you would have found with any other person."
To this doctrine Celestina could not agree. But the fear and fatigue she had within the last twenty-four hours undergone, disqualified her

for any farther discussion of the subject at present, or for the attempt she meant to make to prevail on Lady Horatia to allow her to go down to Jessy for a few weeks; her eyes were indeed so heavy, her complexion so pale in consequence of her long agitation, that now the immediate fears for Montague Thorold's life were over, Lady Horatia advised her to take some repose; a proposal which she gladly accepted; and in despite of the variety of uneasiness she still laboured under, exhausted nature obtained for her a few hours respite in sleep: though she was, in her previous contemplations, so far from assenting heartily to the resigned philosophy of Lady Horatia, that she thought with anguish of the fate of Willoughby, who might, she feared, by the same disappointments in the early part of his life, become quite unlike what he once was; and from his cruel neglect of her since he had been in London, she already fancied she saw that this change had begun.
But could she for one moment have seen the real state of
