at her seeming to approve him; and when he was gone, ventured to say—"What does your Ladyship think of Mr. Vavasour?"
"Why really very well," replied she. "He is very young, and quite unformed; but with those giddy manners, and amid that unpolished conversation, there is no want of understanding."
Celestina again sighed. "No," answered she, "no want of understanding certainly; for Willoughby was not likely to select him for his friend had that been wanting: but yet they were so unlike—so very unlike—that I have often wondered at

their long and intimate friendship. Vavasour is so head long, so impetuous, so selfwilled, and sometimes so boisterous, while Willoughby, with more imagination, more genius, more strength of understanding, is so calm, so reasonable, so attentive to every body—"
She was too much affected to proceed in the catalogue of his virtues, a subject on which she had hardly ever touched before; but stopped, from the emotion she felt; and Lady Horatia, who saw and pitied the source of that emotion, changed the conversation.
Vavasour, flattered by the reception he had met with from the present protectress of Celestina, and more in love than ever in proportion as she was in his opinion infinitely handsomer now than ever, was now very frequent in his visits; while Celestina's whole mind was occupied by the necessity she was under of writing to Willoughby, and the difficulty she was under how to answer with propriety such a letter

as that she had received from him. At length, with many efforts, and more tears, the letter was written and approved of by Lady Horatia; and Celestina endeavoured, in compliance with the wishes of her friend, and with more earnestness than success, to dismiss from her mind some of its corrosive sensations, and to enter, if not with avidity, at least with cheerfulness, into that style of fashionable life, which, though she could not always enjoy, she never failed to adorn.


VAVASOUR had been with her every day since her arrival in town, which was almost a week, and Montague Thorold had never appeared. While Celestina at once wondered at his absence and rejoiced at it, (though perhaps her sensations were mingled with a slight degree of mortification,) for while she disdained every species of coquetry, she yet felt humiliated by the sudden cessation of that attachment which he had taken such pains to convince her, could not be destroyed even by despair.
Impatience, however, to hear of Willoughby, was still predominant in her mind