or held her pallet, or read a botanical description of the plants she was painting. Captain Thorold rode out occasionally to visit such of the neighbouring families as he considered worth his attention; Arabella was often of his party, and Mrs. Thorold engaged in domestic concerns; and then if Celestina could not escape to her own room before Montague, who was always upon the watch for her, could interrupt her, he entreated her so earnestly to walk with him, was so obligingly solicitous to please her, and seemed so mortified when she attempted to excuse herself, that she could seldom resolve to refuse him her conversation, even when she was most willing to be alone; and in the similarity of their tastes and studies, and in the brotherly though silent sympathy he appeared to feel for her sorrows, there was something soothing to her sick heart, which rejected every idea of love but for Willoughby: conscious of which, and supposing that no man could consider her otherwise than as destined to be his wife, or to die unmarried, she dreamed not that she was granting to young Thorold indulgence fatal to his repose. He was himself soon aware of the danger, but he courted it; and though he understood that the heart of Celestina was engaged, he fancied, that without any pretensions to her love, he should be happier in being admitted to her friendship, than the unrivalled affections of any other woman could make him. He was too artless, and too proud of his judgment, to attempt to conceal this attachment from his father, who, had Celestina been disengaged, would have preferred her, with her small fortune and uncertain birth, to the richest heiress in the county: but knowing how she was circumstanced, he saw his younger son's increasing partiality with some concern, and took an opportunity, when they were alone, to tell him the real circumstances of Celestina in regard to Willoughby. "I can consider her," said he, "no otherwise than his affianced wife. They are parted by some cause of which I am ignorant, but which will probably be removed: in the mean time her youth and beauty render her situation very dangerous; as from her being a foreigner, an orphan, and probably the natural daughter of some person of high fashion in France, who has taken care to destroy all evidence of her real family, she is without relations and without protection. Willoughby's father was my old friend. When I was an indigent curate he gave me a living, which, though I have now, from being possessed of greater preferment, resigned