 have made no such enquiry as the present, because I should then have done nothing of which you would not have known the motive, nor have taken any measure without the concurrence of my brother and my friend; but as you told me yourself—would I could forget it!—that it was no longer in your power to retain those characters towards me, I am learning to forget that I ever was so happy as to fancy that no change in my situation, especially a change for the worse, could rob me of that regard so valuable always, so particularly valuable now!"
"Gracious heaven!" cried Willoughby, entirely thrown off his guard by her words and manner—"How have I acted, what

have I said, to deserve this reproach from you Celestina? When we parted last—"
She again interrupted him—"Did we part like friends? like brother and sister?"
"No," replied he hastily; "but I tore myself from you like a man who sacrifices, to the performance of a fatal promise, his own happiness, and who is the victim of family pride and family necessity." This sentence was decisive. His resolution forsook him at once, and his long stifled affection burst through all the restraints he determined to lay on it. "Oh! Celestina!" continued he, "you whom I loved before I knew what it was to love! you whom I now adore with a passion too strong for my reason! do not, do not, I beseech you, aggravate my sufferings. I promised to my mother—and you know how well she deserved to be obeyed—I promised to unite myself with her niece; I promised to extirpate from my heart an inclination that even then I could not conceal. Rash and ridiculous promise! No, Celestina, it is

impossible for me to cease loving you! All my behaviour, which you have thought cold and unfriendly, was a part I was acting in opposition to my real affections! I can sustain it no longer: I cannot bear that you should think of me with indifference: and yet—Oh! my mother, what a cruel task have you imposed on me! Celestina, pity me; I am more wretched than you can imagine!" His agitation now became too violent: he seized the hand of Celestina, and fervently kissed it, while her own sensations were such as no language can describe. That Willoughby loved her, that what she had considered as indifference was owing to the struggle between his duty and his tenderness, was transport such as obliterated every other sentiment. But this delirium lasted but a moment
