ABSTRACT
THOUGH Mrs. Willoughby took infinite pains to appear cheerful, and to hide the progress of the illness which was undermining her constitution, her efforts to appear better than she was, could not deceive her physicians; who now proposed that she should go either to Lisbon or the South of France. This prescription however she endeavoured to evade, by assuring them that travelling so late in the year would infallibly injure rather than be useful to her; but she promised to follow their advice early in the ensuing spring, and to pass the winter at Bath.5 Thither she repaired in November, with her daughter and Celestina, to remain some months. Willoughby declined joining them at the end of term, contrary to his usual custom: he informed his mother, by letter, that he had made a party with some of his friends to pass the Christmas vacation at Alvestone, and that on their way back to Cambridge they would stay two or three days at Bath.
