“Indeed,-I don’t know.”
“Not know!-But do you return to the Mirvans any more?”
“I-I can’t tell, Sir.”
And then I addressed myself to Madame Duval, with such a pretended earnestness, that he was obliged to be silent.
As he cannot but observe the great change in my situation, which he knows not how to account for, there is something in all these questions, and this unrestrained curiosity, that I did not expect from a man who, when he pleases, can be so well-bred as Sir Clement Willoughby. He seems disposed to think that the alteration in my companions authorises an alteration in his manners. It is true, he has always treated me with uncommon freedom, but never before with so disrespectful an abruptness. This observation, which he has given me cause to make, of his changing with the tide, has sunk him more in my opinion than any other part of his conduct.
Yet I could almost have laughed when I looked at Mr. Smith, who no sooner saw me addressed by Sir Clement, than, retreating aloof from the company, he seemed to lose at once all his happy self-sufficiency and conceit; looking now at the baronet, now at himself; surveying, with sorrowful eyes, his dress; struck with his air, his gestures, his easy gaiety, he gazed at him with envious admiration, and seemed himself, with conscious inferiority, to shrink into nothing.
Soon after, Mr. Brown, running up to us, called out, “La, what, i’n’t Miss Polly come yet?”
“Come,” said Mr. Branghton; “why, I thought you went to fetch her yourself, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t find her;-yet I daresay I’ve been over half the garden.”
“Half? but why did not you go over it all?”