When Past Mistakes Return to Haunt — Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World

Two quiet weeks had started to look like a settled calm. On the way to the pump-room the calm stops beside the Avon, where three gentlemen lounge in the path, laugh too loud, and look under her hat. Selwyn assumes an uncommon sternness and orders them to proceed or to suffer the women to pass, or a servant will teach them manners. They laugh. One of them, a lord who remembers the Pantheon, claims he has searched public places for her this age. He asks why she left town before the birthday, hopes she will stay six weeks, and wonders what a woman lives for after thirty if she is only in other people's way. He asks if the queer woman is her mother, or her maiden aunt. Selwyn answers in kind, from his future lodgings with the devil to the news that young ladies are nowhere and that this one reads. Jack Coverley laughs, is told to take Selwyn in hand, and refuses. At the pump-room the string of rude questions ends, though the lord still walks them to the door.

Selwyn wants the name. Evelina does not have it. In the afternoon Mr Ridgeway, the apothecary, supplies a full account, because the person is easy to describe: remarkably tall. He is Lord Merton, lately come to his title, already through more than half his fortune, a professed admirer of beauty, and rarely admitted among women. Among men his companions are chiefly gamblers and jockeys. He may now be admitted anywhere, Ridgeway says, because he is going to reform. A marriage has been waiting until the lady is of age. Her brother, who chiefly opposed it, is tolerably quiet now that she is near her own disposal. Her name is Larpent. Lady Louisa Larpent, sister of Lord Orville. His lordship is coming with her. They are to be at the Honourable Mrs Beaumont's, a relation with a fine house on Clifton Hill.

The sentence undoes the fortnight. Evelina and Selwyn had already declined that roof, because it sits too far from the pump-room. She cannot avoid seeing him. Mrs Beaumont is an acquaintance of Selwyn's. She wishes the first meeting were over, or that she could quit Bristol without it. She wishes she had returned the letter, so her sentiments would be known and would not have to be gathered from her looks. She trembles that he will mistake indignation for confusion, and reserve for embarrassment. She is glad, at least, to hear of his repugnance to the marriage. If his eyes agree with his pen, she will think that of all mankind the only virtuous individual resides at Berry Hill.