“Miss Planta alone attempted to speak. I did not think it incumbent on me to ‘make the agreeable,’ thus used; I was therefore wholly dumb: for not a word, not an apology, not one expression of being sorry for what I suffered, was uttered. The most horrible ill-humour, violence, and rudeness, were all that were shown. Mr. de Luc was too much provoked to take his usual method of passing all off by constant talk: and as I had never seen him venture to appear provoked before, I felt a great obligation to his kindness.
“When we were about half-way, we stopped to water the horses. He then again pulled up the glass, as if from absence. A voice of fury exclaimed, ‘Let it down! without, I won’t go!’
“‘I am sure,’ cried he, ‘all Mrs. de Luc’s plants will be killed by this frost!’
“For the frost was very severe indeed.
“Then he proposed my changing places with Miss Planta, who sat opposite Mrs. Schwellenberg, and consequently on the sheltered side.
“‘Yes!’ cried Mrs. Schwellenberg, ‘Miss Burney might sit there, and so she ought!’
“I told her briefly I was always sick in riding backwards.
“‘Oh, ver well! when you don’t like it, don’t do it. You might bear it when you like it! What did the poor Haggerdorn bear it! when the blood was all running down from her eyes!’
“This was too much! ‘I must take, then,’ I cried, ‘the more warning!’”
Even this quarrel blew over. Mrs. Schwellenberg[[82]] continued to look black, and hurl thunderbolts, as long as the peccant eyes remained inflamed, but as these gradually grew well, her brows cleared and her incivility wore off, till the sufferer became far more in favour than she had ever presumed to think herself till that time. She was$1‘$2’$3at every other word; no one else was listened to if she would speak, and no one else was accepted for a partner at piquet if she would play. Fanny found no cause to which she could attribute this change, and believed the whole mere matter of caprice.