Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World Ch. 60 Summary

Summary

The cheerful breakfast does not survive the moment she is alone. Farmer Smith takes Villars into the study on a domestic matter. She flings the work aside, leans on the table, and looks up to find him in the open doorway. He will not sit. He offers to return to the study and leave her meditations. At dinner he is grave, and she has not spirits enough to carry the talk alone. He takes a book, she stands at the window, and when she turns he has given up reading. The book, he says, both afflicts and perplexes him. He means her. He asks to guess: the country after so much gaiety, the friends she may not see again, and then Lord Orville. She is on her feet. She hates Lord Orville. She puts the letter in his hand.

His silence after that is worse than the guess. He says he sees too plainly that though Evelina is returned, he has lost his child. She is shocked, calls the world a desert without him, and begs to be his confidant again. He will not extort what he abhors to compel. He sends her away to compose herself. She will not go. She kneels, asks pardon for the reserve, and calls him father, protector, and only friend. He raises her, names her the sole joy of his age and the child of his bosom, and the reserve she had so painfully supported breaks in the embrace.

Only then can she bear the explanation. He reads the letter three times. Astonishment leaves him one conjecture: Orville must have been intoxicated when he wrote it. A man so careful of delicacy would not, in his senses, insult a modest young woman. He wishes she had enclosed the page in an empty cover and sent it back, so the shame would have met Orville in the morning and she would have kept her character. She wishes she had thought of it. What she keeps instead is his account of her indignation. Guileless herself, she was not armed for someone else's duplicity, and the disappointment matched the expectation. Concealment, she tells Maria, is the foe of tranquillity. She vows an open account to Maria and to him, and she asks that even Maria's mother not be told, because Orville is a favourite there and does not deserve that honour published. The mind is easier. The health is not.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Ending Protective Silence

The people who love you can hear the work in a cheerful breakfast. Villars watches Evelina drop her sewing the moment she is alone, guesses his way to Orville, and says that though she has returned he has lost his child, until she puts the letter in his hand.

You can answer the question you have been dodging the next time a trusted person asks what is wrong, instead of fetching another book.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Evelina

The farmer takes Villars out of the room, and the cheerful face falls apart before she chooses to confess. Tears arrive first. Speech has to catch up. The body keeps a truer record than the manners she had been serving at breakfast, which is why he finds her already weeping when he looks back.

Continue this thoughtThe Letter Is Late on Purpose

Coming Up in Chapter 61

The date line is Bristol Hotwells, 28 August, and Maria is meant to be surprised. Evelina has been very ill. Villars was so alarmed that he insisted she travel with Mrs Selwyn, and that the journey be hurried. They went slowly. The spot is beautiful, and in body she is already better.

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Original text

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Chapter 60

Breaking Down Walls of Silence

LETTER LX. EVELINA IN CONTINUATION. Berry Hill, August 10th. YOU complain of my silence, my dear Miss Mirvan;-but what have I to write? Narrative does not offer, nor does a lively imagination supply the deficiency. I have, however, at present, sufficient matter for a letter, in relating a conversation I had yesterday with Mr. Villars. Our breakfast had been the most cheerful we have had since my return hither; and when it was over, he did not, as usual, retire to his study, but continued to converse with me while I worked. We might, probably, have passed all the morning…

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Breaking Down Walls of Silence

Summary

Why This Matters