with from Willoughby's rejection of their alliance, was not extraordinary; but Celestina endeavoured to persuade herself, that though they were on the Continent it was with no intention of renewing their negociation with him, to which their pride would never suffer them to stoop; and that, though he should meet them there, it would be on his part involuntary, and only as the nephew of Lord Castlenorth, by no means as the lover of his daughter.
Notwithstanding all her arguments, however, and all her dependance on Willoughby's love and constancy, she was sometimes conscious of returns of suspicion and fear; and unable wholly to stifle the pangs she then felt, she endeavoured to think less of herself and more of others; and above all, to interest herself for Mrs. Elphinstone, who seemed every hour more worthy of her regard.
In the course of their conversation she found, that Mr. and Mrs. Elphinstone,

reduced as they had lately been in circumstances, had once been in a very different situation of life; and she could not resist the inclination she felt to learn what reverse of fortune had thrown them into the distressed condition which Jessy had described to her, and which had made a deep and painful impression on the generous sensibility of Celestina: but however her anxiety was excited, she had so much delicacy as to avoid wounding her new friend by shewing it: unlike that very common description of people, who love to enquire into the sorrows and misfortunes of others, not with any view to relieve or even to soothe them, but merely to gratify an impertinent curiosity, and to rise higher in their own idea by the comparison, while they cry like the Pharisee—"Lord I thank thee that I am not as other men are, even as this publican."
To an heart such as heaven had bestowed on Celestina, there was something in misfortune not only respectable but sacred;

and she behaved towards Mrs. Elphinstone with infinitely more attention than she could ever prevail upon herself to shew to Mrs. Thorold, amid all her bustle of affluence and her claims upon the veneration of the world from good dinners and rich connections.
Mrs. Elphinstone, however, who was aware that Celestina knew part of her history, was very solicitous to relate to her the whole of it; conscious that in her opinion she should lose nothing, and that Celestina had in some measure a right to enquire into the life of a person to whom she had given her confidence, and who was a candidate for her friendship and her esteem. She waited therefore a fit opportunity the second day