to her; but she promised to follow their advice early in the ensuing spring, and to pass the winter at Bath. Thither she repaired in November, with her daughter and Celestina, to remain some months. Willoughby declined joining them at the end of term, contrary to his usual custom:

he informed his mother, by letter, that he had made a party with some of his friends to pass the Christmas vacation at Alvestone, and that on their way back to Cambridge they would stay two or three days at Bath.
Matilda in the mean time, who frequented every public amusement, was become a Bath beauty, followed and admired by that description of men whose opinion is considered as decisive in the world of fashion. Miss Willoughby was always most elegantly dressed; for to be so was the principal study of her life. She was always with people of rank, was of an honourable family, had a good fortune, great connections, a pretty person, and was, to use the common phrase, "extremely accomplished;" that is, she knew something of every thing, and talked as if she knew a great deal more. Among the men of ton who contributed to feed her vanity and raise her fashion, was Mr. Molyneux, the only son of an Irish Baronet, of whom the bounty of a grandfather had made him independent.

With an handsome figure, a good fortune, and a title in reversion, Mr. Molyneux was every where courted and admired; and by lounging about from one public place to another during the summer, and passing his winters, whether in England or Ireland, in the very first world, he had acquired so high a polish, that his manners and his dress, his expressions, and even his air, were copied by all the rising beaux. His understanding was just of that level which rendered him capable of being pleased with this species of fame; and having no great warmth of heart, he had no other motive of choice in marrying than that which arose from his solicitude to maintain his importance as a man of taste in the fashionable world. He had indeed no great inclination to marry at all; but his father, now far advanced in life, pressed him so earnestly to take a wife, and he was so besieged by the kind entreaties of two maiden aunts who had a great deal to give him, that tired by

their importunity, and willing enough to oblige them in a matter which was indifferent to himself, he at length, in the thirty-fifth year of his age, fixed on Miss Willoughby, as