_Sunday_--We had Mrs. Byron and Augusta,[119] and Mrs. Lee, to spend the
afternoon. Augusta opened her whole heart to me, as we sat together,
and told me all the affairs of her family. Her brother, Captain George
Byron, is lately returned from the West Indies, and has brought a wife
with him from Barbadoes, though he was there only three weeks, and
knew not this girl he has married till ten days before he left it!--a
pleasant circumstance for this proud family!
Poor Mrs. Byron seems destined for mortification and humiliation; yet
such is her native fire, and so wonderful are her spirits, that she
bears up against all calamity, and though half mad one day with sorrow
and vexation, is fit the next to entertain an assembly of company;--and
so to entertain them as to make the happiest person in the company, by
comparison with herself, seem sad.
Augusta is a very amiably ingenuous girl, and I love her the more for
her love of her sisters: she talked to me of them all, but chiefly of
Sophia, the youngest next to herself, but who, having an independent
fortune, has quarrelled with her mother, and lives with one of her
sisters, Mrs. Byron, who married a first cousin, And son of Lord Byron.
“Ah, Miss Burney,” she says continually, “if you knew Sophy, you would
never bear me! she is so much better than I am, and so handsome, and
so good, and so clever,--and I used to talk to her of you by the hour
together. She longs so to know you! 'Come,' she says, 'now tell me
something more about your darling, Miss Burney.' But I ought to hope you
may never see her, for if you did I should be so jealous.”