Once, at the end of May, she had an opportunity of unburdening her mind to her father. They met in Westminster Abbey at one of the many commemorations of Handel which occurred about this time; and, neither of them caring very much for the great master’s music, they spent three hours chiefly in conversation. For four years they had not been so long alone together. Dr. Burney happened to mention that some of the French exiles wished him to make them acquainted with the author of ‘Cecilia,’ and repeated the astonished speech of the Comtesse de Boufflers on learning that this was out of his power: ‘Mais, monsieur, est-ce possible! Mademoiselle votre fille n’a-t-elle point de vacances?’ Such an opening was just what Fanny wanted, and she availed herself of it to pour out her whole heart. With many expressions of gratitude for the Queen’s goodness, she owned that her way of life was distasteful to her; she was lost to all private comfort, dead to all domestic endearment, worn with want of rest and laborious attendance. Separated from her relations, her friends, and the society she loved, she brooded over the past with hopeless regret, and lived like one who had no natural connections. “Melancholy was the existence, where happiness was excluded, though not a complaint could be made! where the illustrious personages who were served possessed almost all human excellence—yet where those who were their servants, though treated with the most benevolent condescension, could never in any part of the live-long day, command liberty, or social intercourse, or repose!” “The silence of my dearest father,” she adds, “now silencing myself, I turned to look at him; but how was I struck to see his honoured head bowed down almost into his bosom with dejection and discomfort! We were both perfectly still a few moments; but when he raised his head I could hardly keep my seat to see his eyes filled with tears! ‘I have long,’ he cried, ‘been uneasy, though I have not spoken; ... but ... if you wish to resign—my house, my purse, my arms, shall be open to receive you back!’”