She told me, the next moment, of les spectacles I should find at Southampton, and asked me what she might expect at Bath of public amusement and buildings.
I was travelling I said, for my health, and Should visit no theatres, ball-rooms, etc., and could recommend none.
She did not seem to comprehend me; yet, in the midst of naming these places, she sighed as deeply from the bottom of her heart as if she had been forswearing the world for ever in despair. But it was necessary, she said, when unhappy, to go abroad the more, pour se distraire. In parting, they desired much to renew acquaintance with us when we returned to London. Mrs. Ord gave her direction to the monsieur, who in return, wrote theirs—“The French ladies, NO. 30, Gerrard-street, Soho.”
They stayed till our early hour Of retiring made Mrs. Ord suffer them to go. I was uneasy to know what would become of them. I inquired of a waiter: he unfeelingly laughed, and said, “O! they do well enough; they’ve got a room.” I asked if he could yet let them have beds to stay, or horses to proceed? “No,” answered he, sneeringly: “but it don’t matter for, now they’ve got a room, they are as merry and capering as if they were going to dance.”
Just after this, Mrs. Stephenson, Mrs. Ord’s maid, came running in. “La! ma’am,” she cried, “I’ve been so frightened, you can’t think: the French folks sent for me on purpose, to ask t’other lady’s name, they said, and they had asked William before, so they knew it; but they said I must write it down, and where she lived; so I was forced to write, ‘Miss Burney, Chelsea,’ and they fell a smiling so at one another.”
‘Twas impossible to help laughing; but we desired her, in return, to send for one of their maids and ask their names also. She came back, and said she could not understand the maids, and so they had called one of the gentlemen, and he had written down “Madame la Comtesse de Menage, et Mlle. de Beaufort.”
We found, afterwards, they had sat up till two in the morning, and then procured horses and journeyed towards Oxford.