ABSTRACT
EARLY in the evening of the following day, Celestina and her humble friend arrived at the lodging she had taken: it was a small new built brick house, on the edge of an extensive common: enclosures at a distance relieved a little the dreary uniformity of the view from it’s windows, and a village church, with a few straggling houses scattered round the edge of the heath at the distance of about half a mile, gave some relief to the eye, and some intimation of an inhabited country: winter had alike divested the common of it’s furze and heath blossoms, and the few elms on it’s borders, of their foliage. All was alike dull, and unpleasant: but Celestina remembered that she had now escaped from the Castlenorths, from the sight of preparations for Willoughby’s marriage, and that if she was not to live to see him happy, she should not now witness his struggles and his distress: she tried to believe that she could receive intelligence of his marriage with composure, and be glad in the reflection that he had obeyed his mother; but her heart revolted, and all she could promise herself was, to exert her resolution to obtain such a state of mind, as might enable her to bear, without very acute anguish, of an event, which, notwithstanding all that had passed at her last interview with Willoughby, she still considered as inevitable.
