“Oh vastly!—­but young ladies at that age are always altering.  To tell you the truth, I did not know her at all.”

This, for a little while, passed quietly; but soon after, he exclaimed,

“Ma’am, do you know I have not yet read ’Evelina?”

“Have not you so, sir?” cried she, laughing.

“No, and I think I never shall, for there’s no getting it. the booksellers say they never can keep it a moment, and the folks that hire it keep lending it from one to another in such a manner that it is never returned to the library.  It’s very provoking.”

“But,” said Mrs. Thrale, “what makes you exclaim about it so to me?”

“Why, because, if you recollect, the last thing you said to me when we parted last year, was—­be sure you read ‘Evelina.’  So as soon as I saw you I recollected it all again.  But I wish Miss Thrale would turn more this way.”

“Why, what do you mean, Mr. Cure? do you know Miss Thrale now?”

“Yes, to be sure,” answered he, looking full at me, “though I protest I should not have guessed at her had I seen her with anybody but you.”

“Oh ho!” cried Mrs. Thrale, laughing, “so you mean Miss Burney all this time.”

Mr. Cure looked aghast.  As soon, I suppose, as he was able, he repeated, in a low voice, “Miss Burney! so then that lady is the authoress of ‘Evelina’ all this time.”

And, rather abruptly, he left us and joined another party.

I suppose he told his story to as many as he talked to, for, in a short time, I found myself so violently stared at that I could hardly look any way without being put quite out of countenance,-particularly by young Mr. Cumberland, a handsome, soft-looking youth, who fixed his eyes upon me incessantly, though but the evening before, when I saw him at Hicks’s, he looked as if it would have been a diminution of his dignity to have regarded me twice.  One thing proved quite disagreeable to me, and that was the whole behaviour of the whole tribe of the Cumberlands, which I must explain, 156

Mr. Cumberland,(109) when he saw Mrs. Thrale, flew With eagerness to her and made her take his seat, and he talked to her, with great friendliness and intimacy, as he has been always accustomed to do,-and inquired very particularly concerning her daughter, expressing an earnest desire to see her.  But when, some time after, Mrs. Thrale said, “Oh, there is my daughter, with Miss Burney,” he changed the discourse abruptly,—­never came near Miss Thrale, and neither then nor since, when he has met Mrs. Thrale, has again mentioned her name:  and the whole evening lie seemed determined to avoid us both.

Mrs. Cumberland contented herself with only looking at me as at a person she had no reason or business to know.

The two daughters, but especially the eldest, as well as the son, were by no means so quiet; they stared at me every time I came near them as if I had been a thing for a show; surveyed me from head to foot, and then again, and again returned to my face, with so determined and so unabating a curiosity, that it really made me uncomfortable.