ABSTRACT
WHEN the party met the next day, every body had left off their mourning, and every face appeared cheerful but those of Willoughby and Celestina: the latter, when gaily rallied by the friends of Mr. Molyneux, endeavoured to recover her tranquillity; and as to Matilda herself she gave away her hand with as much ease as if it was a matter of course. Molyneux received it with equal composure; and as soon as they were married, they sat out, accompanied only by Celestina and Mr. Hamilton, a near relation of the bridegroom’s,a for an house which Mr. Molyneux rented in Hampshire. Willoughby saluted his sister; and as he handed her into the coach he again wished her happiness. It was impossible to avoid doing the same as Celestina passed him, but he faultered, and could hardly articulate his compliment, which while he was tremulously attempting to express, holding one of her hands between his, Mr. Hamilton, who had been detained by giving some orders to his servant, came up, and taking her other hand said – ‘Come, come! as you don’t go with us, Willoughby, the care of this lady devolves upon me, and I shall not allow these sorrowful partings to make her as melancholy as you are yourself all her journey.’ Celestina was then unresistingly led away; while Willoughby, who followed her to the coach door, found at that moment his heart assailed by pangs it had never felt before, but which he knew too well to be jealousy in its most corrosive form. As the coach drove away, he stood looking after it; now repenting that he had not accompanied his sister and her husband into Hampshire, then determining to order his horse and follow them; now detesting Hamilton, of whom he had never thought before, and then resolving to conquer a passion which a thousand circumstances made it the height of folly to indulge. The coach which contained the object of it was already out of sight; but Willoughby still stood on the spot from whence it had been driven, so lost in the indulgence of these sensations, that he forgot where he was, and was roused from his reverie only by the arrival of a friend with whom he had made an appointment to go in his chaise part of the way to Cambridge.
