 you adieu till we meet again in Devonshire."
Montague Thorold, who from the moment he understood her had listened with impatience, now protested that the promise he had just given could not be binding in an instance that must be as injurious to his honour as cruel, to his feelings. "Why should you suffer this Mr. Vavasour," said he, "to force himself upon you, while you drive me from you? What is this chimerical claim that he derives from Willoughby, who has resigned his own; and how poor and spiritless must I appear, who having been permitted that of seeing you thus far on your journey, consent to resign to another the honour of attending you to the end of it: to another, who assumes a right no better founded than my own; and to whom I am to give place for no other reason but because he rudely

demands it. You would despise me, Madam, and I should deserve to be despised, were I capable of so mean a desertion."
This was exactly what Celestina feared; but persisting in her resolution to escape the alarm to which she must be subject from Vavasour and Montague Thorold's being together during the journey, she told the latter very calmly, that unless he consented to oblige her, and to go forward under pretence of being obliged to return home, that their acquaintance must here end for ever.
Even against this, fear, his reluctante to yield, or to appear, to yield the right of attending her to Vavasour, awhile supported him. The dread, too, leaft Vavasour should now succeed for himself, and that he should see those hopes destroyed for ever which he so fondly cherished since Willoughby was out of the question, made him resist still more forcibly the injunctions Celestina desired to lay upon him. At length, his fear of offending her, his real

love for her, and the sight of her uneasiness; her assurances that Vavasour never would have any particular interest in her favour, (though at the same time she bade him understand that he had himself no better claim,) and his wish to shew her how much he preferred her satisfaction to his own, prevailed upon him to sacrifice his pride and his fears to her entreaties; and making himself acquainted with the place where she was to be with Mrs. Elphinstone in London, where he obtained permission to attend her as soon as she arrived, Montague Thorold, though still reluctantly and with great compulsion on himself, departed alone, and on post horses pursued his way to London.
Having thus prevailed on Thorold to depart
