Matilda and her friend found a numerous circle, assembled round Lady Torrendale, among whom it was easy to distinguish Fitzroy, and his friend Captain Lionhart; a gentleman who appeared already known to the Countess, and whom her son mentioned as having kindly postponed for a few days, the object of his journey (which was to see some friends in Wales) that he might have the pleasure of paying his compliments to her. Captain Fitzroy, after having bowed slightly to Miss Ferrars, seemed anxious to approach Matilda, and the manner that accompanied the first words he addressed to her, which were indeed of the most flattering kind, put an end to the surprise she had expressed respecting the denomination he had received in their society; but, whether it arose from blindness, obstinacy, female contradiction, or the obscuring effects of fatigue, and a rather neglected travelling dress, she could discern but little of that family beauty with which Arbella's partiality had so liberally endowed him.

Captain Fitzroy appeared to her a pale, genteel-looking young man, with a person and address which could certainly boast an air of fashion; but whose countenance, which bespoke the languor of evident and recent ill-health, was no otherwise particularly interesting. Arbella, on her part, (though at no loss to divine the cause,) felt mortified at being treated with such marked and haughty coldness in the presence of her friend, by one in whose praise she had recently and in such lively terms indulged. A secret consciousness, hardly confessed to herself, that he did / not, at least at that moment, quite answer the flattering picture she had drawn, mingled with her embarrassment; and she silently wished she could have retracted a few of the encomiums she had so lavishly bestowed.