Villars rejoices that his letters can go to Howard Grove again. Evelina would have grieved to know his anxiety while she was in the great world, and her journal has almost wholly occupied him since it was dated from London. Sir Clement, he writes, must be an artful designing man. The passion he pretends has neither sincerity nor honour, and the manner of declaring it borders on insult. The conduct after the opera convinces Villars that, had her vehemence not frightened Willoughby, Queen Ann Street would have been the last place he ordered the chariot. He is thankful for the escape, and he does not need to enlarge on the indiscretion of trusting so flighty a man.
The nobleman at the Pantheon, bold as she described him, gives Villars no apprehension. An open attack can only disgust a mind like hers. Willoughby is more dangerous because he gives real offence while avoiding every appearance of intentional evil. Villars is glad the heart seems untouched. A little care may still secure her. Lord Orville appears of a better order. His spirit toward Lovel, and his anxiety after the opera, prove sense and feeling. He thought there was reason to tremble while she was in Sir Clement's power, and he acted with real honour by telling the Mirvans at once. Many men, Villars says, would have called it more honourable to leave her to a libertine than to risk a friend's displeasure.
Her sorrow at leaving London is natural, and it afflicts him. He almost regrets the consent he had not the resolution to withhold. The artfulness of her nature and the simplicity of her education alike unfit her for the town, and the supposed obscurity of her birth exposes her to disagreeable adventures. His hopes have centred in the country. On this one subject he is not far from the Captain: the town, as a public life, is a harbour of fraud and folly, of duplicity and impertinence. In private families, he allows, goodness may be found in London as in the country. He still hopes to see her the ornament of her neighbourhood. The fortnight is over. The seventeen years are what he asks her to answer for.
Coming Up in Chapter 25
Evelina answers from Howard Grove that the work of seventeen years is not undone, yet she is not half so happy. Captain Mirvan and Madame Duval have broken the harmony of the house. On the day they left London, Monsieur Du Bois tried to climb into the coach.
