 pleasure than what arose from the power of soothing the sorrows of her unfortunate companion, and forming schemes for restoring her to the favour of her grandfather; and to her unhappy lover, in whose fate she became as much interested from the artless description Jessy had given, as if she had herself known him. It was necessary however to part with her: but as she appeared in too weak a state of health to encounter the rude reception she might meet with from her father and her mother in law, if she appeared before them without notice, Celestina thought it best to keep her till an answer could be obtained from them, and she therefore hired a messenger, by whom the letter the trembling Jessy indited was dispatched to the cottage of Woodburn, which was about seven miles distant. Towards evening he returned, and brought a reluctant and surly consent from her father to receive her for a little time till she recovered her health.

The terms in which this answer was written, though Celestina endeavoured to give them the best interpretation she could, were cruelly painful to poor Jessy, who wept over the letter, while Celestina, with the most generous pity, assured her, that if her father's behaviour to her was unkind, and her stay at his house uncomfortable, she would again receive her, and that she should be welcome to remain with her till her health was re-established, and till means could be found to procure for her the favour of her grandfather, who, on enquiry of her hostess, Celestina found to be as Jessy had represented him—a very rich farmer, now quite superannuated, and almost childish; who having once determined to resent his daughter's marriage, had persisted in it from the hard obstinacy of his nature, and had been supported in it by the arts of an old female relation who lived with him, and who, while she made a purse every year out of what was entrusted to her, looked forward with avidity to his

death, when she hoped to possess the whole. Celestina procured an horse and a man to lead it, the expence of which she paid herself, and on the third day after their arrival at Thorpe Heath, Jessy took leave of her lovely and generous benefactress, who was now left to reflect, without interruption, on her own destiny.
Till lately she had not been conscious of the force of her attachment to Willoughby; for it began so early in life, that she had never been alarmed by the uneasiness which seizes the heart on it's first reception of a new passion: she now however found that
