“Dr. Burney, when the Cecilian business was arranged[1], again conveyed the Memorialist to Streatham.  No further reluctance on his part, nor exhortations on that of Mr. Crisp, sought to withdraw her from that spot, where, while it was in its glory, they had so recently, and with pride, seen her distinguished.  And truly eager was her own haste, when mistress of her time, to try once more to soothe those sorrows and chagrins in which she had most largely participated, by answering to the call, which had never ceased tenderly to pursue her, of return.

“With alacrity, therefore, though not with gaiety, they re-entered the Streatham gates—­but they soon perceived that they found not what they had left!

“Changed, indeed, was Streatham!  Gone its chief, and changed his relict! unaccountably, incomprehensibly, indefinably changed!  She was absent and agitated; not two minutes could she remain in a place; she scarcely seemed to know whom she saw; her speech was so hurried it was hardly intelligible; her eyes were assiduously averted from those who sought them; and her smiles were faint and forced.”

[Footnote 1:  This may mean when the arrangements were made for the publication, or when the book was published.  It was published about the beginning of June, 1782.]

“The mystery, however, soon ceased; the solicitations of the most affectionate sympathy could not long be urged in vain;—­the mystery passed away—­not so the misery!  That, when revealed, was but to both parties doubled, from the different feelings set in movement by its disclosure.

“The astonishing history of the enigmatical attachment which impelled Mrs. Thrale to her second marriage, is now as well known as her name:  but its details belong not to the history of Dr. Burney; though the fact too deeply interested him, and was too intimately felt in his social habits, to be passed over in silence in any memoirs of his life.

“But while ignorant yet of its cause, more and more struck he became at every meeting, by a species of general alienation which pervaded all around at Streatham.  His visits, which, heretofore, had seemed galas to Mrs. Thrale, were now begun and ended almost without notice:  and all others,—­Dr. Johnson not excepted,—­were cast into the same gulph of general neglect, or forgetfulness;—­all,—­save singly this Memorialist!—­to whom, the fatal secret once acknowledged, Mrs. Thrale clung for comfort; though she saw, and generously pardoned, how wide she was from meeting approbation.

“In this retired, though far from tranquil manner, passed many months; during which, with the acquiescent consent of the Doctor, his daughter, wholly devoted to her unhappy friend, remained uninterruptedly at sad and altered Streatham; sedulously avoiding, what at other times she most wished, a tete-a-tete with her father.  Bound by ties indissoluble of honour not to betray a trust that, in the ignorance