ABSTRACT
AS Mrs. Elphinstone was too much dejected to allow her to go out, Celestina, who had great pleasure in visiting antiquities, and whose active mind was perpetually in search of new ideas, was compelled either to relinquish these gratifications, or to permit Montague Thorold only to accompany her. He was generally so guarded in his conversation, that, though it was easy to see how much he suffered in suppressing his passion, Celestina had no reasonable ground of complaint. He found, however, at Edinburgh, that it was particularly uneasy to her to visit the places she wished to see without some other companion, and recollecting that one of the Professorsa was well known to his father, he made use of the claim that acquaintance gave him, and by that means Celestina received all the attention and hospitality for which the Scottish nation are so justly praised. The gentleman to whom she thus became known, had several daughters, amiable and elegant young women: with them she saw all that the capital of Scotland afforded worthy of observation; with them she visited the ruinous chapel, and magnificently mournful apartments of Holyrood House, and gave a sigh to the fate of the lovely, luckless Mary, who was almost its last resident sovereign.15 Then parting with her newly-acquired friends with mutual regret, she proceeded on her road to England, nothing particular occurring on the way, for some time, except the slow but evident amendment of Mrs. Elphinstone’s spirits, and the symptoms of increased attachment in Montague Thorold; who, if he loved her before with an attachment fatal to his peace and subversive of his prospects, now seemed to idolize her with an ardour bordering on phrenzy. In spite of the resolutions she had avowed to him, in spiteb of those he had himself formed, this ardent and invincible passion was visible in every thing he said and did. He seemed to have forgotten that he had any other business in the world than to serve her, to listen to the enchantment of her voice, to watch every change of her countenance. His whole being was absorbed in that one sentiment; and though he had promised not to consider the advantages which his own wild Quixotism, aided by accident, had thus obtained for him, as making the least alteration in the decided preference of Celestina for another, he insensibly forgot, at least at times, her unalterable affection for Willoughby; and seeing, not withstanding all her attempts to conceal it, that she pitied him, that she was not insensible of 231his attempts to please her, nor blind to his powers of pleasing, he cherished, in defiance of reason and conviction (from which he fled as much as possible), the extravagant hope that the barrier, whatever it was, between her and Willoughby, would be found invincible; and that the time, though it might yet be remote, would at length arrive, when he should himself be allowed to aspire to her favour.
