'To the pure, every little deviation seemed offensive: yet I saw not,
that there was any thing amiss the whole evening, either in the words or
behaviour of any of my friends. Some people could talk but upon one or
two subjects: she upon every one: no wonder, therefore, they talked to
what they understood best; and to mere objects of sense. Had she
honoured us with more of her conversation, she would have been less
disgusted with ours; for she saw how every one was prepared to admire
her, whenever she opened her lips. You, in particular, had said, when
she retired, that virtue itself spoke when she spoke, but that you had
such an awe upon you, after she had favoured us with an observation or
two on a subject started, that you should ever be afraid in her company
to be found most exceptionable, when you intended to be least so.'
Plainly, she said, she neither liked my companions nor the house she was
in.
I liked not the house any more than she: though the people were very
obliging, and she had owned they were less exceptionable to herself than
at first: And were we not about another of our own?
She did not like Miss Partington--let her fortune be what it would, and
she had heard a great deal said of her fortune, she should not choose an
intimacy with her. She thought it was a hardship to be put upon such a
difficulty as she was put upon the preceding night, when there were
lodgers in the front-house, whom they had reason to be freer with, than,
upon so short an acquaintance, with her.
I pretended to be an utter stranger as to this particular; and, when she
explained herself upon it, condemned Mrs. Sinclair's request, and called
it a confident one.
She, artfully, made lighter of her denial of the girl for a bedfellow,
than she thought of it, I could see that; for it was plain, she supposed
there was room for me to think she had been either over-nice, or over-
cautious.