“‘Oh, was that all,’ cried she, disappointed. ‘I thought it had been something about Mr. Sawyer, for I declare I have been plagued so about him, I am quite sick of his name.’
“‘And for my part, I never heard it! So fear nothing from me on his account.’
“‘Lord, Mr. Gosport, how can you say so! I am sure you must know about the festino that night, for it was all over the town in a moment.’
“‘What festino?’
“‘Well, only conceive how provoking! Why, I know nothing else was talked of for a month.’”
This is the Miss Larolles who haunted the mind of Anne Elliot, in Persuasion, when she moved to the end of a form at the concert, in order to be sure of not missing Captain Wentworth:
“She could not do so without comparing herself with Miss Larolles, the inimitable Miss Larolles, but still she did it, and not with much happier effect.”
Here is the passage in question: “Do you know,” says Miss Larolles,
“Mr. Meadows has not spoke one word to me all the evening! though I am sure he saw me, for I sat at the outside on purpose to speak to a person or two, that I knew would be strolling about; for if one sits on the inside there’s no speaking to a creature you know; so I never do it at the opera, nor in the boxes at Ranelagh, nor anywhere. It’s the shockingest thing you can conceive, to be made sit in the middle of these forms, one might as well be at home, for nobody can speak to one.”
The singularly unselfish affection of Mrs. and Miss Mirvan for Evelina, never clouded by envy of her superior attractions, finds its echo in the experience of Jane Fairfax: