But Miss Burney beguiled her leisure principally in improving her acquaintance with Colonel Digby, who paid her marked attention during their attendance at the Gloucestershire watering-place. This courteous, insinuating colonel suited her taste far better than the more soldier-like equerries whom she met at Court. She had conceived a decided inclination for him from the moment of his first introduction to her. ‘He is a man,’ she then wrote, ‘of the most scrupulous good-breeding; diffident, gentle, and sentimental in his conversation, and assiduously attentive in his manners.’ He had now the additional recommendation that belongs to a widower grieving over joys departed, yet not despairing of consolation. In this state of mind, he neglected no opportunity of making himself agreeable to a lady whose disposition was so congenial to his own. Even a fit of the gout, which detained him from his official duties, could not prevent him from limping over to the Lodge to sit with Miss Burney. They talked of many things, but chiefly of books, of the affections, of happiness, and of religion. The famous authoress astonished her admirer not a little by the discovery she was fain to make of the many books she had never yet read. Her candour encouraged him to produce his own stores of literature, which were much more extensive than hers. This pensive gentleman, we need scarcely say, was addicted to reciting poetry and passages of pious sentiment. One line especially, which was often in his mouth, about ‘the chastity of silent woe,’ Fanny found peculiarly beautiful, though it might have reminded her of the Irish Commissary whom she had met at Brighton. Very soon quotations were succeeded by readings. The pair studied together Akenside’s poems, Falconer’s ‘Shipwreck,’ Carr’s Sermons, and a work[86] entitled ‘Original Love-Letters,’ with which we own ourselves unacquainted. Presently, however, as the air of Cheltenham did not appear to suit the Colonel’s gout, he began to think of taking leave of absence.