What Camilla experienced at this juncture she believed inadmissible of aggravation. Even the breaking off with Edgar seemed as a new misfortune from the new force which circumstances gave to its affliction. With his sympathising aid, how might she have softened the sorrows of her father! how have broken the shock of the blow Clermont was preparing for her uncle? But now, instead of lessening their griefs, she must herself inflict upon them a heavier evil than any they had yet suffered. And how could she reveal tidings for which they were so wholly unprepared? how be even intelligible in the history, without exposing the guilty Lionel beyond all chance of pardon?

Again she went to counsel with Eugenia, who, with her usual disinterested affection, proposed taking the painful business upon herself at their return home. Camilla with tears of gratitude accepted the sisterly office, and resolved to devote the rest of her short time for Southampton to Mrs. Berlinton; who, shocked to see her evident unhappiness, hung over her with the most melting tenderness: bewailing alike the disappointment of Eugenia, and the conduct of her brother; who now, with exquisite misery, shut himself wholly up in his room.

This compassionate kindness somewhat softened her anguish; but when the engagements of Mrs. Berlinton called her away, Mrs. Mittin burst briskly into her chamber.

'Well, my dear,' cried she, 'I come with better news now than ever! only guess what it is!'

Nothing could less conduce to the tranquillity of Camilla than such a desire; her conjectures always flowed into the channels of her wishes; and she thought immediately that Mrs. Mittin had been informed of her situation, and came to her with some intelligence of Edgar.

Mrs. Mittin, after keeping her a full quarter of an hour in suspence, at last said: 'Do you know Miss Dennel's going to be married?—though she was fifteen only yesterday!—and I am invited to the wedding?'

No surprise had ever yet produced less pleasure to Camilla, who now ceased to listen, though Mrs. Mittin by no means ceased to speak, till her attention was awakened by the following sentence: 'So, as I am to go to town, to shop with her, at her own papa's desire, you can give me the money, you know, my dear, and I can pay off your Tunbridge bills for you.'

She then took out of her pockets some accounts, which, she said, she had just received; though, in fact, they had been in her possession more than a week: but till the invitation of Miss Dennel called her so pleasantly away, she had thought it prudent to keep every motive in reserve, that added importance to her stay.

Camilla, with the utmost apprehension, took the papers into her hands; they were the bills from Tunbridge, of the milliner, the shoe-maker, the haberdasher, and the glover, and amounted altogether to sixteen pounds.

The chief articles had been nearly forced upon her by Mrs. Mittin, with assurances of their cheapness, and representations of their necessity, that, joined to her entire ignorance of the enormous charges of fashion, had led her to imagine four or five guineas the utmost sum at which they could be estimated.

What now, then, was her horror! if to sixteen pounds amounted the trifles she had had at Tunbridge, what calculation must she make of articles, so infinitely more valuable, that belonged to her debts at Southampton? And to whom now could she apply? The unhappy situation of her father was no longer an only reason to forbear such a call upon him: Lionel, still under age, was flying the kingdom with debts, which, be they small as they might, would, to Mr. Tyrold's limited income, be as heavy as the more considerable ones of her cousin upon Sir Hugh; yet who besides could give her aid? Eugenia, whose yearly allowance, according to her settled future fortune, was five times that of her sisters, had given what help she had in her power, before she quitted Cleves, upon the affair of the horse; and all that remained of a considerable present made for her Southampton expedition by her uncle, who in every thing distinguished her as his successor and heiress, she had just bestowed upon Lionel, even, as he had declared, to her last half crown. Mrs. Berlinton, whose tender friendship might, in this emergence, have encouraged solicitation, was involved in debts of honour, and wanted money for herself; and to Mrs. Arlbery, her only other acquaintance rich enough to give assistance, and with whom she was intimate enough to ask it, she already owed five guineas; and how, in conscience or decency, could she address her for so much more, when she saw before her no time, no term, upon which she could fix for restitution?

In this terrible state, with no one to counsel her, and no powers of self-judgment, she felt a dread of going home, that rendered the coming day a day of horror, though to a home to which, hitherto, she had turned as the first joy of her happiness, or softest solace of any disturbance. Her filial affections were in their pristine force; her short commerce with the world had robbed them of none of their vivacity; her regard for Edgar, whom she delighted to consider as a younger Mr. Tyrold, had rather enlarged than divided them; but to return a burthen to an already burthened house, an affliction to an already afflicted parent—'No!' she broke out, aloud, 'I cannot go home!—I cannot carry calamity to my father!—He will be mild—but he will look unhappy; and I would not see his face in sorrow—sorrow of my own creating—for years of after joy!'

She threw herself down upon the bed, hid her face with the counterpane, and wept, in desperate carelessness of the presence of Mrs. Mittin, and answering nothing that she said.

In affairs of this sort, Mrs. Mittin had a quickness of apprehension, which, though but the attribute of ready cunning, was not inferior to the keenest penetration, possessed, for deeper investigations, by characters of more solid sagacity. From the fear which Camilla, in her anguish, had uttered of seeing her father, she gathered, there must be some severe restriction in money concerns; and, without troubling herself to consider what they might be, saw that to aid her at this moment would be the highest obligation; and immediately set at work a brain as fertile in worldly expedients, as it was barren of intellectual endowments, in forming a plan of present relief, which she concluded would gain her a rich and powerful friend for life.

She was not long in suggesting a proposition, which Camilla started up eagerly to hear, almost breathless with the hope of any reprieve to her terrors.

Mrs. Mittin, amongst her numerous friends, counted a Mr. Clykes, a money-lender, a man, she said, of the first credit for such matters with people of fashion in any difficulty. If Camilla, therefore, would collect her debts, this gentleman would pay them, for a handsome premium, and handsome interest, till she was able, at her own full leisure, to return the principal, with a proper present.

Camilla nearly embraced her with rapture for this scheme. The premium she would collect as she could, and the interest she would pay from her allowance, certain that when her uncle was cleared from his embarrassments, her own might be revealed without any serious distress. She put, therefore, the affair wholly into the hands of Mrs. Mittin, besought her, the next morning, to demand all her Southampton bills, to add to them those for the rent and the stores of Higden, and then to transact the business with Mr. Clykes; promising to agree to whatever premium, interest, and present, he should demand, with endless acknowledgments to herself for so great a service.

She grieved to employ a person so utterly disagreeable to Edgar; but to avert immediate evil was ever resistless to her ardent mind.

The whole of the Southampton accounts were brought her early the next morning by the active Mrs. Mittin, who now concluded, that what she had conceived to be covetousness in Camilla, was only the fear of a hard tyrant of a father, who kept her so parsimoniously, that she could allow herself no indulgence, till the death of her uncle should endow her with her own rich inheritance.

Had this arrangement not taken place before the arrival of the bills, Camilla, upon beholding them, thought she should have been driven to complete distraction. The ear-rings and necklace, silver fringes and spangles, feathers, nosegay, and shoe-roses, with the other parts of the dress, and the fine Valencienne edging, came to thirty-three pounds. The cloak also, that cheapest thing in the world, was nine guineas; and various small articles, which Mrs. Mittin had occasionally brought in, and others with which Camilla could not dispense, came to another five pounds. To this, the rent for Higden added eighteen; and the bill of stores, which had been calculated at thirty, was sent in at thirty-seven.

The whole, therefore, with the sixteen pounds from Tunbridge, amounted to one hundred and eighteen pounds nine shillings.

Struck to the very soul with the idea of what she must have endured to have presented, at such a period, so large an account, either at Cleves or at Etherington, she felt lifted into paradise by the escape of this expedient, and lost sight of every possible future difficulty, in the relief of avoiding so severe a present penalty.

By this means, also, the tradesmen would not wait; and she had been educated with so just an abhorrence of receiving the goods, and benefiting from the labours of others, without speeding them their rights and their rewards, that she felt despicable as well as miserable, when she possessed what she had not repaid.

Mrs. Mittin was now invested with full powers for the agency, which her journey to London would give her immediate means to execute. She was to meet Miss Dennel there in two days, to assist in the wedding purchases, and then to accompany that young lady to her father's house in Hampshire, whence she could visit Etherington, and finally arrange the transaction.

Camilla, again thanking, took leave of her, to consign her few remaining hours to Mrs. Berlinton, who was impatient at losing one moment of the society she began sincerely to regret she had not more uniformly preferred to all other. As sad now with cares as Camilla was with afflictions, she had robbed her situation of nearly the only good which belonged to it—an affluent power to gratify every luxury, whether of generosity or personal indulgence. Her gaming, to want of happiness, added now want of money; and Camilla, with a sigh, saw something more wretched, because far deeper and more wilful in error than herself.

They mingled their tears for their separate personal evils, with the kindest consolation that either could suggest for the other, till Camilla was told that Eugenia desired to see her in the parlour.

Mrs. Berlinton, ashamed, yet delighted to meet her again, went down at the same time. She embraced her with fondness, but ventured not to utter either apology or concern. Eugenia was serious but composed, sighed often, yet both accepted and returned her caresses.

Camilla enquired if Miss Margland expected them immediately.

'Yes,' she answered; 'but I have first a little business of my own to transact.' Then, turning to Mrs. Berlinton, and forcing a smile, 'You will be surprised,' she said, 'to hear me ask for ... your brother!... but I must see him before I can leave Southampton.'

Mrs. Berlinton hung her head: 'There is certainly,' she cried, 'no reproach he does not merit ... yet, if you knew ... the respect ... the ... the....'

Eugenia rang the bell, making a slight apology, but not listening to what Mrs. Berlinton strove to say; who, colouring and uneasy, still attempted to utter something softening to what had passed.

'Be so good,' said Eugenia, when the footman appeared, 'to tell Mr. Melmond I beg to speak with him.'

Camilla astonished, and Mrs. Berlinton silenced, waited, in an unpleasant pause, the event.

Eugenia, absorbed in thought, neither spoke to, nor looked at them, nor moved, till the door opened, and Melmond, who durst not refuse so direct a summons, though he would have preferred any punishment to obeying it, blushing, bowing, and trembling, entered the room.

She then started, half heaved, and half checked a sigh, took a folded note out of her pocket-book, and with a faint smile, said, 'I fear my desire must have been painful to you; but you see me now for the last time—I hope!—with any ill-will.'

She stopt for breath to go on; Melmond, amazed, striving vainly to articulate one word of excuse, one profession even of respect.

'Believe me, Sir,' she then continued, 'surprise was the last sensation I experienced upon a late ... transaction. My extraordinary personal defects and deformity have been some time known to me, though—I cannot tell how—I had the weakness or vanity not to think of them as I ought to have done!—--But I see I give you uneasiness, and therefore I will be more concise.'

Melmond, confounded, had bowed down his head not to look at her, while Camilla and Mrs. Berlinton both wept.

'The sentiments, Sir,' she then went on, 'of my cousin have never been declared to me; but it is not very difficult to me to divine what they may be. All that is certain, is the unkindness of Fortune, which forbids her to listen, or you to plead to them. This, Sir, shall be my care'—she stopt a moment, looking paler, and wanting voice; but presently recovering, proceeded—'my happiness, let me say, to endeavour to rectify. I have much influence with my kind uncle; can I doubt, when I represent to him that I have just escaped making two worthy people wretched, he will deny aiding me to make them happy? No! the residence already intended at Cleves will still be open, though one of its parties will be changed. But as my uncle, in a manner unexampled, has bound himself, in my favour, from any future disposition of what he possesses, I have ventured, Sir, upon this paper, to obviate any apprehensions of your friends, for the unhappy time when that generous uncle can no longer act for himself.'

She then unfolded, and gave him the paper, which contained these words:

'I here solemnly engage myself, if Miss Indiana Lynmere accepts, with the consent of Sir Hugh Tyrold, the hand of Frederic Melmond, to share with them, so united, whatever fortune or estate I may be endowed with, to the end of my life, and to bequeath them the same equal portion by will after my death.

Signed. Eugenia Tyrold.'

Unable to read, yet conceiving the purport of the writing, Melmond was at her feet. She endeavoured to raise him, and though extremely affected, said, with an air of some pleasantry, 'Shew less surprise, Sir, or I shall conclude you thought me as frightful within as without! But no! Providence is too good to make the mind necessarily deformed with the body.'

'Ah, Madam!' exclaimed Melmond, wholly overcome, 'the noblest as well as softest of human hearts I perceive to be yours——and were mine at my own disposal—it must find you resistless!'—

'No more, no more!' interrupted she, penetrated with a pleasure in these words which she durst not indulge, 'you shall hear from me soon.—Meanwhile, be Hope your motto, Friendship shall be mine.'

She was then going to hold out her hand to him; but her courage failed; she hastily embraced Mrs. Berlinton, took the arm of Camilla, and hurried out of the house, followed by the footman who had attended her.

Melmond, who had seen the motion of her hand now advancing, now withdrawn, would have given the universe to have stamped upon it his grateful reverence; but his courage was still less than her own; she seemed to him, on the sudden, transformed to a deity, benignly employed to rescue and bless him, but whose transcendent goodness he could only, at a distance, and in all humility, adore.

Mrs. Berlinton was left penetrated nearly as much as her brother, and doubtful if even the divine Indiana could render him as happy as the exalted, the incomparable Eugenia.

The two sisters found Miss Margland in extreme ill-humour waiting their arrival, and the whole party immediately quitted Southampton.

It not seldom occurred to Miss Margland to be cross merely as a mark of consequence; but here the displeasure was as deep with herself as with others. She had entered Southampton with a persuasion her fair pupil would make there the establishment so long the promised mede of her confinement; and Indiana herself, not knowing where to stop her sanguine and inflated hopes, imagined that the fame of her beauty would make the place where it first was exhibited the resort of all of fashion in the nation. And the opening of the scene had answered to their fullest expectations: no other name was heard but Indiana Lynmere, no other figure was admired, no other face could bear examination.

But her triumph, though splendid, was short; she soon found that the overtures of eyes were more ready than those of speech; and though one young baronet, enchanted with her beauty, immediately professed himself her lover, when he was disdained, in the full assurance of higher offers, and because a peer had addressed himself to Eugenia, she saw not that he was succeeded by any other, nor yet that he broke his own heart. Men of taste, after the first conversation, found her more admirable to look at than speak with; adventurers soon discovered that her personal charms were her only dower; the common herd were repulsed from approaching her by the repulsive manners of Miss Margland; and all evinced, that though a passion for beauty was still as fashionable as it was natural, the time was past when the altar of Hymen required no other incense to blaze upon it.

The governess, therefore, and the pupil, quitted Southampton with equal disappointment and indignation; the first foreseeing another long and yawning sojourn at Cleves; the second firmly believing herself the most unaccountably ill-used person in the creation, that one offer only had reached her, and that without repetition, though admired nearly to adoration, she literally rather than metaphorically conceived herself a demi-goddess.

One solitary offer to Eugenia, of an every way ruined young nobleman, though a blast both to the settlement and the peace of Indiana, was to herself wholly nugatory. Intent, at that period, upon dedicating for ever to Melmond her virgin heart, she was sorry, upon his account, for the application, but gave it not, upon her own, a moment's consideration. This proposition was made upon her first arrival, and was followed by no other. She was then, by the account given to the master of the ceremonies by Miss Margland, regarded as the heiress of Cleves: but, almost immediately after, the report spread by Mrs. Mittin, that Camilla was the true heiress, gained such ground amongst the shopkeepers, and thence travelled so rapidly from gossip to gossip, and house to house, that Eugenia was soon no more thought of; though a species of doubt was cast upon the whole party, from the double assertion, that kept off from Camilla, also, the fortune seekers of the place.

But another rumour got abroad, that soon entirely cleared Eugenia, not merely of lovers but acquaintances; namely, her studies with Dr. Orkborne. This was a prevailing theme of spite with Miss Margland, when the Doctor had neglected and displeased her; and a topic always at hand for her spleen, when it was angered by other circumstances not so easy of blame or of mention.

This, shortly, made Eugenia stared at still more than her peculiar appearance. The misses, in tittering, ran away from the learned lady; the beaux contemptuously sneering, rejoiced she was too ugly to take in any poor fellow to marry her. Some imagined her studies had stinted her growth; and all were convinced her education had made her such a fright.

Of the whole party, the only one who quitted Southampton in spirits was Dr. Orkborne. He was delighted to be no longer under the dominion of Miss Margland, who, though she never left him tranquil in the possession of all he valued, his leisure, and his books and papers, eternally annoyed him with reproaches upon his absence, non-attendance, and ignorance of high life; asking always, when angry, 'If any one had ever heard who was his grandfather?'

The doctor, in return, despising, like most who have it not, whatever belonged to noble birth, regarded her and her progenitors as the pest of the human race; frequently, when incensed by interruption, exclaiming, 'Where intellect is uncultivated, what is man better than a brute, or woman than an idiot?'

Nor was his return to his own room, books, and hours, under the roof of the indulgent Sir Hugh, the only relief of this removal: he knew not of the previous departure of Dr. Marchmont, and he was glad to quit a spot where he was open to a comparison which he felt to be always to his disadvantage.

So much more powerful and more prominent is character than education, that no two men could be more different than Dr. Marchmont and Dr. Orkborne, though the same university had finished their studies, and the same passion, pursuit, and success in respect to learning, had raised and had spread their names and celebrity. The first, with all his scholastic endowments, was a man of the world, and a grace to society; the second, though in erudition equally respectable, was wholly lost to the general community, and alive only with his pen and his books. They enjoyed, indeed, in common, that happy and often sole reward of learned labours, the privilege of snatching some care from time, some repining from misfortune, by seizing for themselves, and their own exclusive use, the whole monopoly of mind; but they employed it not to the same extension. The things and people of this lower sphere were studiously, by Dr. Orkborne, sunk in oblivion by the domineering prevalence of the alternate transport and toil of intellectual occupation; Dr. Marchmont, on the contrary, though his education led to the same propensities, still held his fellow creatures to be of higher consideration than their productions. Without such extravagance in the pursuit of his studies, he knew it the happy province of literary occupations, where voluntary, to absorb worldly solicitudes, and banish for a while even mental anxieties; and though the charm may be broken by every fresh intrusion of calamity, it unites again with the first retirement, and, without diminishing the feelings of social life, has a power, from time to time, to set aside their sufferings.