, but to any other I cannot, I will not submit; nor will I allow any thing to this damned prudery. I know myself worthy of you, highly as I think of you. Yes, I deserve you, if it be only for my persevering

love; and by all that's good I will not be denied."
"You really will, Sir," replied Celestina; who, more and more distressed by his perseverance, desired to put an end to it for ever if possible—"you really will; for I protest to you that I never can give any other answer than I have already given, and I beg, I entreat that you will desist from a pursuit that can produce for you only mortification."
"May perdition seize me if I do!" returned he with renewed vehemence. "No! if I perish in the attempt, I will persevere!" He was proceeding in this strain, when Lady Horatia sent to let Celestina know she waited for her to go out; and she took the opportunity of hastening away, glad to be relieved from a conversation so distressing; while Vavasour, finding all attempts to detain her ineffectual, left the house in one of those paroxysms of passion, which disappointment, from his having never been used to submit to it, always produced.


IT would be difficult to say, whether Willoughby, wandering and solitary among the remote villages of Yorkshire, or Celestina, surrounded in London by what the world calls pleasure and amusement, was the most internally wretched. Celestina's last dialogue with Vavasour, had convinced her that Willoughby no longer thought of her even with that degree of friendship and tenderness which he had so often assured her nothing should destroy: he was gone out of town merely to prepare for his marriage; and gone without deigning either to see her or answer the letter she had written to him. There was, in such conduct, so much unkindness and inhumanity, that she began to hope her reflections on it would

by degrees abate the anguish she now felt: and she listened to Lady Horatia, who continually spoke of it as an unequivocal proof of Willoughby's want of an heart capable of a generous and steady attachment. To Montague Thorold, however, (who now again returned to town after an absence on business of some little time), she could not listen with so much complacency as her friend wished; and she repeatedly told him, that the greatest obligation he could confer upon her would be to desist from talking to her of love. The certainty, however, there now
