CHAPTER IIIT
HE months went on and Theophilus saw little or nothing of Luke. The breach between Evelina and Daphne forbade social relations.
The sardonic old Aunt Fanny in Hertfordshire, to whose house the two branches of the family were periodically bidden for a gaunt week-end, sometimes tried, by way of diversion, to bring them suddenly together. But, Evelina requiring from the old lady a definite assurance that she should not meet the unspeakable Daphne, Aunt Fanny found herself baulked of her whim by an elderly gentlewoman’s distaste both for lies and bad manners.
The Luke Wavering affairs were further eclipsed for the Birds by a General Election which shook, to the foundations of their being, the queer-minded in the country who attached importance to so absurd an event. Evelina sto
