Mrs Beaumont's cards bring Evelina and Mrs Selwyn to Clifton Hill for dinner, and Selwyn sketches their hostess while they wait. Born noble, Beaumont treats birth and virtue as the same thing. The affability is pride: formal, mechanical, and kept up, Selwyn says, to cancel a Southampton debt she incurred when she still thought Selwyn a woman of quality. Questions about which Anvilles Evelina belongs to embarrass more than they welcome. Mr Lovel bows only to Beaumont. Lady Louisa looks round the room as if determined not to see it. Merton meets her headache without interest. Orville asks after Monday's fatigue, then introduces Evelina to his sister. Louisa offers a cold gladness and turns back to the men. He bites his lip and talks to Evelina until dinner. The anger she had been saving is gone.
At table Mr Coverley arrives late from an overturned phaeton and bets Merton a thousand pounds on a drive. Louisa will not eat. Orville moves the stake off their necks, and Coverley calls him as careful as an old woman. Selwyn's reason is that his friends are not yet tired of him. The men then talk sauces like cooks. Evelina would be sick of it if Orville's face were not sharing the disgust. At tea she sits at a window as Nobody, and the same men pass her for Lady Louisa until Orville draws a chair and stays.
He makes the company vote on a safer bet. Horace, bows, her own couplet, and Lovel's longest straw fill the time, and nobody laughs at the straw because the fashion is common. Orville speaks last. The money should go to whoever brings the worthiest person to share it. The room stares, her eyes fill, and Merton says he will pick his Swiss. They postpone the decision. Asked why she is thoughtful, she is ashamed of her foolish vote. He says she only complied with the company, and that his gravity was for Merton, not a claim to stand above the room.
On the ride home Selwyn accepts a week at Clifton so Beaumont can discharge the old debt among fools she likes to cut up. Evelina will not block her. Tomorrow they are guests. She already knows the week will be his attention on one side and neglect on the other. Birth and fortune, she has just learned, are what buy the civility she does not have.
Coming Up in Chapter 65
Evelina dates from Clifton and leads with the roof. She is an inmate of the same house as Lord Orville, and without that the visit would be disagreeable. Selwyn asks if she has met the fop Lovel before, then repeats what he told Lady Louisa: a kind of toad-eater, first seen attending Miss Mirvan.
