ABSTRACT
THE return of Mr. and Mrs. Molyneux to London was postponed from time to time till November. Lord Castlenorth had been too ill to set out on his journey to England at the time he proposed, and the family meeting which was to settle all that related to the marriage was now delayed till after Christmas. Willoughby however testified no impatience: he had promised to meet his sister and her husband in town on their arrival; but instead of doing so, he sent such an insufficient excuse as must have appeared very strange to Matilda had she thought much about it; but immersed in pleasures and pursuits of her own, she gave herself very little time to reflect on her brother’s conduct, and was far from supposing that he absented himself because he could not see Celestina without encreasing and confirming a passion which he had many reasons against indulging, and of which he was determined to cure himself by absence and reflection. The negociation with his uncle, which had been carried so far by his mother, he neither declined nor forwarded; but suffered it to remain nearly on the footing she had left it, flattering himself that by the time Miss Fitz-Hayman arrived in London, he should have so far conquered his early attachment as to have an heart as well as the hand, which he had promised to his mother’s entreaties, to offer her.
