WITH a pen flowing quick from feelings of the most generous warmth, Edgar wrote the following letter:

To Dr. Marchmont.

Accuse me not of precipitance, my dear Doctor, nor believe me capable of forgetting the wisdom of your suggestions, nor of lightly weighing those evils with which your zeal has encompassed me, though I write at this instant to confess a total contrariety of sentiment, to call back every promise of delay, and to make an unqualified avowal, that the period of caution is past! Camilla is not happy-something, I know not what, has disturbed the gay serenity of her bosom: she has forbid me to enquire the cause;-one way only remains to give me a claim to her confidence.–O Doctor! wonder not if cold, tardy, suspicious–I had nearly said unfeeling, caution, shrinks at such a moment, from the rising influence of warmer sympathy, which bids me sooth her in distress, shield her from danger, strengthen all her virtues, and participate in their emanations!

You will not do me the injustice to think me either impelled or blinded by external enchantments; you know me to have withstood their yet fuller blaze in her cousin: O no! were she despoiled of all personal attraction by the same ravaging distemper that has been so fierce with her poor sister; were a similar cruel accident to rob her form of all symmetry, she would yet be more fascinating to my soul, by one single look, one single word, one sweet beaming smile, diffusing all the gaiety it displays, than all of beauty, all of elegance, all of rank, all of wealth, the whole kingdom, in some wonderful aggregate, could oppose to her.

Her face, her form, however penetrating in loveliness, aid, but do not constitute, her charms; no, ’tis the quick intelligence of soul that mounts to her eyes, ’tis the spirit checked by sweetness, the sweetness animated by spirit, the nature so nobly above all artifice, all study–O Doctor! restore to me immediately every vestige, every trait of any promise, any acquiescence, any idea the most distant, that can be construed into a compliance with one moment’s requisition of delay!

EDGAR MANDLEBERT.

Cleves Park, Friday Evening.

Camilla, meanwhile, shut up in her room, wept almost without cessation, from a sense of general unhappiness, though fixed to no point, and from a disturbance of mind, a confusion of ideas and of feelings, that rendered her incapable of reflection. She was again followed by Eugenia, and could no longer refuse, to her tender anxiety, a short detail of the attack which occasioned her disorder; happy, at least, in reciting it, that by unfolding the cause, there no longer remained any necessity to repress the effects of her affliction.

To her great surprise, however, Eugenia only said: ‘And is this all, my dear Camilla?’

‘All!’ exclaimed Camilla.

‘Yes, is it all?–I was afraid some great misfortune had happened.’

‘And what could happen more painful, more shocking, more cruel?’

‘A thousand things! for this is nothing but a mere mistake; and you should not make yourself unhappy about it, because you are not to blame.’

‘Is it then nothing to be accused of designs and intentions so criminal?’

‘If the accusation were just, it might indeed make you wretched: but it is Miss Margland only who has any reason to be afflicted; for it is she alone who has been in the wrong.’

Struck with this plain but uncontrovertible truth, Camilla wiped her eyes, and strove to recover some composure; but finding her tears still force their way, ‘It is not,’ she cried, with some hesitation, ‘it is not the aspersions of Miss Margland alone that give me so much vexation-the unkindness of Indiana–’

‘Indeed she is highly reprehensible; and so I will tell her;-but still, if she has any fears, however ill-founded, of losing Edgar, you cannot but pardon-you must even pity her.’

Struck again, and still more forcibly, by this second truth, Camilla, ashamed of her grief, made a stronger and more serious effort to repress it; and receiving soon afterwards a summons from her uncle, her spirit rose once more to the relief of her dejection, upon seeing him seated between Miss Margland and Indiana, and discerning that they had been making some successful complaint, by the air of triumph with which they waited her approach.

‘My dear Camilla,’ he cried, with a look of much disturbance, ‘here’s a sad ado, I find; though I don’t mean to blame you, nor young Mr. Mandlebert neither, taste being a fault one can’t avoid; not but what a person’s changing their mind is what I can’t commend in any one, which I shall certainly let him know, not doubting to bring him round by means of his own sense: only, my dear, in the meanwhile, I must beg you not to stand in your cousin’s way.’

‘Indeed, my dear uncle, I do not merit this imputation; I am not capable of such treachery!’ indignantly answered Camilla.

‘Treachery! Lord help us! treachery!’ cried Sir Hugh, fondly embracing her, ‘don’t I know you are as innocent as the baby unborn? and more innocent too, from the advantage of having more sense to guide you by! treachery, my dear Camilla! why, I think there’s nobody so good in the wide world!-by which I mean no reflections, never thinking it right to make any.’

Indiana, sullenly pouting, spoke not a word; but Miss Margland, with a tone of plausibility that was some covert to its malice, said ‘Why then all may be well, and the young ladies as good friends as ever, and Mr. Mandlebert return to the conduct of a gentleman, only just by Miss Camilla’s doing as she would be done by; for nothing that all of us can say will have any effect, if she does not discourage him from dangling about after her in the manner he does now, speaking to nobody else, and always asking her opinion about every trifle, which is certainly doing no great justice to Miss Lynmere.’

Indiana, with a toss of the head, protested his notice was the last thing she desired.

‘My dear Indiana,’ said Sir Hugh, ‘don’t mind all that outward shew. Mr. Mandlebert is a very good boy, and as to your cousin Camilla, I am sure I need not put you in mind how much she is the same; but I really think, whatever’s the reason, the young youths of now-a-days grow backwarder and backwarder. Though I can’t say but what in my time it was just the same; witness myself; which is what I have been sorry for often enough, though I have left off repenting it now, because it’s of no use; age being a thing there’s no getting ahead of.’

‘Well, then, all that remains is this,’ said Miss Margland, ‘let Miss Camilla keep out of Mr. Mandlebert’s way; and let her order the carriage, and go to Mrs. Arlbery’s to-morrow, and take no notice of his likings and dislikings; and I’ll be bound for it he will soon think no more of her, and then, of course, he will give the proper attention to Miss Lynmere.’

‘O, if that’s all,’ cried Sir Hugh, ‘my dear Camilla, I am sure, will do it, and as much again too, to make her cousin easy. And so now, I hope, all is settled, and my two good girls will kiss one another, and be friends; which I am sure I am myself, with all my heart.’

Camilla hung her head, in speechless perturbation, at a task which appeared to her equally hard and unjust; but while fear and shame kept her silent, Sir Hugh drew her to Indiana, and a cold, yet unavoidable salute, gave a species of tacit consent to a plan which she did not dare oppose, from the very strength of the desire that urged her opposition.

They then separated; Sir Hugh delighted, Miss Margland triumphant, Indiana half satisfied, half affronted, and Camilla with a mind so crowded, a heart so full, she scarcely breathed. Sensations the most contrary, of pain, pleasure, hope, and terror, at once assailed her. Edgar, of whom so long she had only thought as of the destined husband of Indiana, she now heard named with suspicions of another regard, to which she did not dare give full extension; yet of which the most distant surmise made her consider herself, for a moment, as the happiest of human beings, though she held herself the next as the most culpable for even wishing it.

She found Eugenia still in her room, who............