ABSTRACT
MR. Thorold, who was informed that Celestina had received letters from Willoughby, felt a true friendly impatience to know their contents: but feeling also how much his lovely guest must in any event be agitated, he not only forbore to intrude upon her with any enquiries himself, but in order that she might not suffer even from the looks of his family, which he knew could not fail to express solicitude arising from less generous motives, he sent her up a note to her own apartment, in which he begged she would not come down to dinner, to put herself, through form, into any situation that might be in any degree painful. This exemption was particularly gratifying to her, as the younger Thorold was this day expected at dinner, and was to remain at home for some weeks; and his elder brother, a Captain in the army, who had been some time in Ireland, was to meet him in the evening. Celestina was unfit for company, and above all, the company of strangers; and again she regretted that in the first unsettled tumult of her spirits she had agreed to Mr. Thorold’s proposal, instead of going back to the lodgings she had formerly inhabited: she was now, however, compelled to remain where she was, till she could determine, with the advice of Mr. Thorold, whither to go. She thought it probable that he might wish her to remain with him; but to this, except his friendly regard for her, and the advantage of being near Cathcart and Jessy, she had no inducement; and wherever she was, she determined it should not be as a mere visitor for any length of time, but that she would pay for her board. Again the quiet and liberty of her cottage on the heath recurred to her; but when she enjoyed that quiet, her heart had not undergone those vicissitudes of happiness and misery, which had now, she greatly feared, excluded tranquillity from her bosom for ever; what had then afforded her a species of melancholy pleasure, the distant view of a spot in Alvestone Park, would now serve only to render her more unhappy, and to encourage that tendency to repine, which her reason told her she should, both on Willoughby’s account and her own, rather resolve to conquer than endeavour to indulge: she believed, however, that if once some resolution was formed as to her future residence, she should be easier herself, and be better able to satisfy Willoughby. To this subject, therefore, she turned her thoughts, and examined with a heavy heart several different plans that offered themselves to her mind.
