WHEN the chaise drove from Cleves Park, all attempt at any disguise was over with Camilla, who alive only to the horror of appearing ungrateful to Edgar, wept without controul; and, leaning back in the carriage, entreated Eugenia to dispense with all conversation.
Eugenia, filled with pity, wondered, but complied, and they travelled near four miles in silence; when, perceiving, over the paling round a paddock, Mrs. Arlbery and a party of company, Camilla dried her eyes, and prepared for her visit, of which the impetuosity of her feelings had retarded all previous consideration.
Eugenia, with true concern, saw the unfitness of her sister to appear, and proposed walking the rest of the way, in the hope that a little air and exercise might compose her spirits.
She agreed; they alighted, and bidding the footman keep with the carriage, which they ordered should drive slowly behind, they proceeded gently, arm in arm, along a clean raised bank by the side of the road, with a pace suiting at once the infirmity of Eugenia, and the wish of delay in Camilla.
The sound of voices reached them from within the paddock, though a thick shrubbery prevented their seeing the interlocutors.
‘Can you make out the arms?’ said one.
‘No,’ answered another, ‘but I can see the postillion’s livery, and I am certain it is Sir Hugh Tyrold’s.’
‘Then it is not coming hither,’ said a third voice, which they recollected for Mrs. Arlbery’s ; ‘we don’t visit: though I should not dislike to see the old baronet. They tell me he is a humorist; and I have a taste for all oddities: but then he has a house full of females, and females I never admit in a morning, except when I have secured some men to take the entertaining them off my hands.’
‘Whither is Bellamy running?’ cried another voice, ‘he’s off without a word.’
‘Gone in hopes of a rencounter, I doubt not,’ answered Mrs. Arlbery; ‘he made palpable aim at one of the divinities of Cleves at the ball.’
Eugenia now grew uneasy. ‘Let us be quick,’ she whispered ‘and enter the house!’
‘Divinities! Lord! are they divinities?’ said a girlish female voice; ‘pray how old are they?’
‘I fancy about seventeen.’
‘Seventeen! gracious! I thought they’d been quite young; I wonder they a’n’t married!’
‘I presume, then, you intend to be more expeditious?’ said another, whose voice spoke him to be General Kinsale.
‘Gracious! I hope so, for I hate an old bride. I’ll never marry at all, if I stay till I am eighteen.’
‘A story goes about,’ said the General, ‘that Sir Hugh Tyrold has selected one of his nieces for his sole heiress; but no two people agree which it is, they have asserted it of each.’
‘I was mightily taken with one of the girls,’ said Mrs. Arlbery; ‘there was something so pleasant in her looks and manner, that I even felt inclined to forgive her being younger and prettier than myself; but she turned out also to be more whimsical-and that there was no enduring.’
Camilla, extremely ashamed, was now upon the point of begging Eugenia to return, when a new speech seized all her attention.
‘Do you know, General, when that beautiful automaton, Miss Lynmere, is to marry young Mandlebert?’
‘Immediately, I understand; I am told he has fitted up his house very elegantly for her reception.’
A deep sigh escaped Camilla at such publicity in the report and belief of the engagement of Edgar with her cousin, and brought with it a consciousness too strong for any further self-disguise, that her distress flowed not all from an unjust accusation: the sound alone of the union struck as a dagger at her heart, and told her, incontrovertibly, who was its master.
Her sensations were now most painful: she grew pale, she became sick, and was obliged, in her turn, to lean upon Eugenia, who, affrighted to see her thus strangely disordered, besought her to go back to the chaise.
She consented, and begged to pass a few minutes there alone. Eugenia therefore stayed without, walking slowly upon the bank.
Camilla, getting into the carriage, pulled up the blinds, and, no longer self-deceived, lamented in a new burst of sorrow, her unhappy fate, and unpropitious attachment.
This consciousness, however, became soon a call upon her integrity, and her regret was succeeded by a summons upon propriety. She gave herself up as lost to all personal felicity, but hoped she had discovered the tendency of her affliction, in time to avoid the dangers, and the errors to which it might lead. She determined to struggle without cessation for the conquest of a partiality she deemed it treachery to indulge; and to appease any pain she now blushed to have caused to Indiana, by strictly following the hard prescription of Miss Margland, and the obvious opinion of Eugenia, in shunning the society, and no longer coveting the approbation of Edgar. ‘Such, my dear father,’ she cried, ‘would be your lesson, if I dared consult you! such, my most honoured mother, would be your conduct, if thus cruelly situated!’
This thought thrilled through every vein with pleasure, in a sense of filial desert, and her sole desire was to return immediately to those incomparable parents, under whose roof she had experienced nothing but happiness, and in whose bosoms she hoped to bury every tumultuous disturbance.
These ideas and resolutions, dejecting, yet solacing, occupied her to the forgetfulness of her intended visit, and even of Eugenia, till the words: ‘Pray let me come to you, my dear Camilla!’ made her let down the blinds.
She then perceived Mr. Bellamy earnestly addressing her sister.
He had advanced suddenly towards her, by a short cut from the paddock, of which she was not aware, when she was about twenty yards from the chaise.
She made an effort to avoid him; but he planted himself in the way of her retreat, though with an air of supplication, with which she strove in vain to be angry.
He warmly represented the cruelty of thus flying him, entreated but the privilege of addressing her as a common acquaintance; and promised, upon that condition, to submit unmurmuring to her rejection.
Eugenia, though in secret she thought this request but equitable, made him no answer.
‘O madam,’ he cried, ‘what have I not suffered since your barbarous letter! why will you be so amiable, yet so inexorable?’
She attempted to quicken her pace; but again, in the same manner, stopping her, he exclaimed: ‘Do not kill me by this disdain! I ask not now for favour or encouragement–I know my hard doom–I ask only to converse with you-though, alas! it was by conversing with you I lost my heart.’
Eugenia felt softened; and her countenance, which had forfeited nothing of expression, though every thing of beauty, soon shewed Bellamy his advantage. He pursued it eagerly; depicted his passion, deprecated her severity, extolled her virtues and accomplishments, and bewailed his unhappy, hopeless flame.
Eugenia, knowing that all she said, and believing that all she heard issued from the fountain of truth, became extremely distressed. ‘Let me pass, I conjure you, Sir,’ she cried, ‘and do not take it ill-but I cannot hear you any longer.’
The vivacity of bright hope flashed into the sparkling eyes of Bellamy, at so gentle a remonstrance; and entreaties for lenity, declarations of passion, professions of submission, and practice of resistance, assailed the young Eugenia with a rapidity that confounded her: she heard him with scarce any opposition, from a fear of irritating his feelings, joined to a juvenile embarrassment how to treat with more severity so sincere and so humble a suppliant.
From this situation, to the extreme provocation of Bellamy, she was relieved by the appearance of Major Cerwood, who having observed, from the paddock, the slow motion of the carriage, had come forth to find out the cause.
Eugenia seized the moment of interruption to press forward, and make the call to her sister already mentioned; Bellamy accompanying and pleading, but no longer venturing to stop her: he handed her, therefore, to the chaise, where Major Cerwood also paid his compliments to the two ladies; and hearing they were going to the seat of Mrs. Arlbery, whither Camilla now forced herself, though more unwillingly than ever, he ran on, with Bellamy, to be ready to hand them from the carriage.
They were shewn into a parlour, while a servant went into the garden to call hi............