University of Virginia Library

September 22.

I WAS surprized to-day by a visitor to my mother. Miss Burchell came to pay her respects to her: I have told you they corresponded. My mother, it seems, had given her notice of the time she intended being in town: the young lady had been to wait on her in St. James's-street, and was from thence directed by the servant, who kept the house, to our new lodgings.

She is really a very lovely young woman; and there is something so insinuating in her manner, that there is no seeing her without being prejudiced in her favour. She changed colour when my mother presented me to her by my name; but, at the same time, surveyed me with a scrutinous eye. My mother asked her, had she seen Mr. Faulkland since his return to England. She answered, No, with a sigh; but that she believed he had been at Putney. To see his son? said my mother, without reflecting, that Miss Burchell had avoided mentioning that circumstance, and stopped upon naming the place where the child was at nurse. Yes, she replied, in a timorous accent, and stealing a look at me. The woman told me, that a young gentleman had been there about six weeks ago, who said he came from the child's father abroad, and made her a handsome present. As I did not then know Mr. Faulkland was returned to England, I should not have suspected it was he himself who had called, if his housekeeper (that gentlewoman in whose

care he left me) had not come to me from him. She is settled now in a lodging-house; and Mr. Faulkland, on his coming to London, went to her, to inquire where the child was. She told me he inquired civilly after me, and gave her a letter for me, which the good-natured woman joyfully brought me; but it contained nothing but a bill of a hundred pounds, with two or three lines, polite indeed, but not kind, to inform me it was for the child's use; and I have heard nothing of his since.

My mother told her, that as Mr. Faulkland was returned again, probably to continue in England, she did not despair of his being brought o do her justice; especially as she must suppose the sight of the child had made an impression on him. She then, without ceremony, entered into a detail of my unhappy story: she was full of it; and being, as you know, of a very communicative temper, made no scruple to inform Miss Burchell of every particular. She seemed very much affected with the story, and grew red and

pale by turns; especially at finding her aunt so deeply concerned in it. She exclaimed against her barbarity, reproached Mr. Arnold for his injurious suspicions, and condoled obligingly with me on the wrongs I had received; and yet, my Cecilia, would you believe it, I thought I could discover, through all this, that Miss Burchell was not intirely free from doubt in regard to my innocence. This observation I gathered only from certain looks that she cast at me, as my mother related the passages. There are little minute touches on the countenance sometimes, which are so transient they can hardly be overtaken by the eye, and which, from the passions being strongly guarded that give rise to these emotions, are so slight, that a common observer cannot discover them at all. I am sure my mother did not; but my sensibility was particularly rouzed at her relating a story that I did not then wish to have divulged; and I was too much interested in the narrative, not to attend precisely to its effects on the hearer. I am neither angry with, or surprized at, Miss Burchell, for her scepticism on this occasion. She loves Mr. Faulkland, and had not herself the power to resist him: she knows he once loved me, and may fansy he does so still; nay, thinks perhaps I am not indifferent towards him: she is a stranger to my heart; but is convinced that her aunt is base enough, first to ensnare to vice, and then to betray. Upon the whole, there is nothing unnatural in her suspicions; but I think they could not proceed from a virtuous mind.

Upon Miss Burchell's taking leave, my mother gave her a general invitation to come to her as often as she had leisure: telling her, she must not take it amiss if she did not return her visits, as her health would not permit her to go much abroad.

Miss Burchell, it seems, has a house (not lodgings) in a retired street in Westminster, where she has been ever since she quitted her aunt, to whom she never discovered where she lived. Her fortune enables her to appear very genteely in the private manner she chooses to live. She

goes but seldom into publick, and has but a narrow circle of acquaintance. Those are all of her own sex, and of the best character; and she has had the good fortune to preserve her reputation unsuspected; so that, I hope, she may yet retrieve her error by an advantageous match, should Mr. Faulkland still continue averse to her.