He then spoke to Mr. Bernard, whom he had already met two or three times here.

I had now retreated to the wall, and purposed gliding softly, though speedily, out of the room ; but before I had taken a single step, the king, in a loud whisper to Mrs. Delany, said, " Is that Miss Burney ? “-and on her answering, " Yes, sir,” he bowed, and with a countenance of the most perfect good humour, came close up to me.

A most profound reverence on my part arrested the progress of my intended retreat.

“How long have you been come back, Miss Burney?”

“Two days, sir.”

Unluckily he did not hear me, and repeated his question and whether the second time he heard me or not, I don’t know, but he made a little civil inclination of his head, and went back to Mrs. Delany.

He insisted she should sit down, though he stood himself, and began to give her an account of the Princess Elizabeth, who once again was recovering, and trying, at present, James’s powders.  She had been blooded, he said, twelve times in this last fortnight, and had lost seventy-five ounces of blood, besides undergoing blistering and other discipline.  He spoke of her illness with the strongest emotion, and seemed quite filled with concern for her danger and suffering.

Mrs. Delany next inquired for the younger children.  They had all, he said, the whooping-cough, and were soon to be removed to Kew.

“Not,” added he, " for any other reason than change of air for themselves ; though I am pretty certain I have never had the distemper myself, and the queen thinks she has not had it either :—­we shall take our chance.  When the two eldest had it, I sent them away, and would not see them till it was over; but now there are so many of them that there would be no end to separations, so I let it take its course.”

Mrs. Delany expressed a good deal of concern at his running this risk, but he laughed at it, and said, he was much more afraid of catching the rheumatism, which has been threatening one of his shoulders lately, However, he added, he should hunt, the next morning, in defiance of it.

A good deal of talk then followed about his own health, and the extreme temperance by which he preserved it.  The fault of his constitution, he said, was a tendency to excessive fat, 300

which e kept, however, in order, by the most vigorous exercise and the strictest attention to a simple diet.

Mrs. Delany was beginning to praise his forbearance, but he stopped her.

“No, no,” he cried, " ’tis no virtue ; I only prefer eating plain and little to growing diseased and infirm.”

During this discourse, I stood quietly In the place where he had first spoken to me.  His quitting me so soon, and conversing freely and easily with Mrs. Delany, proved so delightful a relief to me, that I no longer wished myself away; and the moment my first panic from the surprise was over, I diverted myself with a thousand ridiculous notions, of my own Situation.