So Sophia found such immediate Satisfaction from the Relief of those Terrors she had of being overtaken by her Father, that the Arrival of the French scarce made any impression on her.

The narrator makes this ironic "aside" in Chapter VI of Book XI, when all the characters have converged on the inn at Upton. His words gently parody the fact that young lovers see their own small calamities as much more pertinent than national calamities—Sophia's preoccupation with her escape from her father overrides any interest she might otherwise entertain in the Jacobite Rebellion, an actual occurrence in English history in which Bonnie Prince Charlie, whose father, James III, was exiled to France, returned in 1745 to try to recapture the throne from George II.