knew to be her sister. On this, therefore, she dwelt, as a circumstance favourable to the notion she most wished to entertain ; and as two or three days passed on without her hearing from Lady Molyneux, her eagerness to enquire of her subsided into a strong belief that she knew nothing.
Vavasour assiduously attended every day at the house of Lady Horatia during this

interval, and contrived to obtain for himself some degree of interest in her favour. The openness and candour of his temper, was with her an apology for half his faults; while his youth and natural vivacity obtained his pardon for the rest. His fortune was splendid, and his family ancient and respectable; while his person was such as could hardly fail to please; and his manners, careless and wild as they were, appeared to advantage in the eyes of Lady Horatia; who had been disgusted by the coldness and apathy, either real or affected, of many of those young men of fashion who frequented her house.
On Celestina, however, the frequent opportunities she had of observing Vavasour, had a very opposite effect. In her mind a standard of perfection had been early formed, and every man she now saw was pleasing or otherwise as they resembled or differed from Willoughby. She continued therefore to treat Vavasour with encreasing coldness and saw with concern that Lady

Horatia was every day more solicitous for his success.
Willoughby, in the mean time, continued to wander about Europe without any fixed plan, and merely flying from himself. Still anxious to gather information on the subject which had destroyed all the happiness of his life, and having little hopes of obtaining any but by means of Lady Castlenorth, he often conquered his reluctance, and visited his uncle at a villa he now inhabited near Naples; where he was always received with pleasure, and where, save only on the point which alone interested him, Lady Castlenorth seemed to descend from her natural character, to endeavour by every means in her power to gratify and oblige him: and her lord, who really loved his nephew as much as his imbecility of mind allowed him to love any body, and who saw in him and in his alliance with his daughter, the only chance of perpetuating a family which was the great object of his pride, became hourly more eager

to see him, and more gratified by his company.
It has been observed, that there are two reasons which equally operate in determining some people to marry—love and hatred; and something resembling both these sentiments agitated the heart of Miss FitzHayman. Of an involuntary preference to her cousin, she had been sensible from