Sir Charles repeated his recommendation of her to Lord L——­ and Lord G——.  They offered their best services:  Lord W——­ invited her and all of us to Windsor.  Different parties of pleasure were talked of:  but still the enlivener of every party was not to be in any one of them.  She tried to look pleased; but did not always succeed in the trial:  an eye of love and anger mingled was often cast upon the man whom everybody loved.  Her bosom heaved, as it seemed sometimes, with indignation against herself:  that was the construction which I made of some of her looks.

Lady Maffei, however, seemed pleased with the parties of pleasure talked of.  She often directed herself to me in Italian.  I answered her in it as well as I could.  I do not talk it well:  but as I am not an Italian, and little more than book-learned in it, (for it is a long time ago since I lost my grandpapa, who used to converse with me in it, and in French,) I was not scrupulous to answer in it.  To have forborne, because I did not excel in what I had no opportunity to excel in, would have been false modesty, nearly bordering upon pride.  Were any lady to laugh at me for not speaking well her native tongue, I would not return the smile, were she to be less perfect in mine, than I am in hers.  But Lady Olivia made me a compliment on my faulty accent, when I acknowledged it to be so.  Signora, said she, you shew us, that a pretty mouth can give beauty to a defect.  A master teaching you, added she, would perhaps find some fault; but a friend conversing with you, must be in love with you for the very imperfection.

Sir Charles was generously pleased with the compliment, and made her a fine one on her observation.

He attended the two ladies to their lodgings in his coach.  He owned to Dr. Bartlett, that Lady Olivia was in tears all the way, lamenting her disgrace in coming to England, just as he was quitting it; and wishing she had stayed at Florence.  She would have engaged him to correspond with her:  he excused himself.  It was a very afflicting thing to him, he told the doctor, to deny any request that was made to him, especially by a lady:  but he thought he ought in conscience and honour to forbear giving the shadow of an expectation that might be improved into hope, where none was intended to be given.  Heaven, he said, had, for laudable ends, implanted such a regard in the sexes towards each other, that both man and woman who hoped to be innocent, could not be too circumspect in relation to the friendships they were so ready to contract with each other.  He thought he had gone a great way, in recommending an intimacy between her and his sisters, considering her views, her spirit, her perseverance, and the free avowal of her regard for him, and her menaces on his supposed neglect of her.  And yet, as she had come over, and he was obliged to leave England so soon after her arrival; he thought he could not do less:  and he hoped his sisters, from whose example she might be benefited, would, while she behaved prudently, cultivate her acquaintance.