Again she stopped, terrified at the conjectures to which this opening might give birth; but when further and fondly pressed by her mother, she added, 'It is not alone these unjust surmises,—nor even Indiana's unkind concurrence in them—but also—I have been afraid—I must have made a strange—a capricious—an ungrateful appearance in the eyes of Edgar Mandlebert.'

Here her voice dropt; but presently recovering, she rapidly continued, 'I know it is very immaterial—and I am sensible how foolish it may sound—but I shall also think of it no more now,—and therefore, as I have told the whole—'

She looked up, conscience struck at these last words, to see if they proved satisfactory; she caught, in the countenance of her mother, an expression of deep commiseration, which was followed by a thousand maternal caresses of unusual softness, though unaccompanied by any words.

Penetrated, yet distressed, she gratefully received them, but rejoiced when, at length, Mr. Tyrold, rising, said, 'Go, my love, upstairs to your sister; your mother, else, will never proceed with her business.'

She gladly ran off, and soon, by a concise narration, satisfied Lavinia, and then calmed her own troubled mind.

Mr. Tyrold now, though evidently much affected himself, strove to compose his wife. 'Alas!' cried she, 'do you not see what thus has touched me? Do you not perceive that our lovely girl, more just to his worth than its possessor, has given her whole heart to Edgar Mandlebert?'

'I perceived it through your emotion, but I had not discovered it myself. I grieve, now, that the probability of such an event had not struck me in time to have kept them apart for its prevention.'

'I grieve for nothing,' cried she, warmly, 'but the infatuated blindness of that self-lost young man. What a wife would Camilla have made him in every stage of their united career! And how unfortunately has she sympathised in my sentiments, that he alone seemed worthy to replace the first and best protector she must relinquish when she quits this house! What will he find in Indiana but a beautiful doll, uninterested in his feelings, unmoved by his excellencies, and incapable of comprehending him if he speaks either of business or literature!'

'Yet many wives of this description,' replied Mr. Tyrold, 'are more pleasing in the eyes of their husbands than women who are either better informed in intellect, or more alive in sensation; and it is not an uncommon idea amongst men, that where, both in temper and affairs, there is least participation, there is most repose. But this is not the case with Edgar.'

'No! he has a nobler resemblance than this portrait would allow him; a resemblance which made me hope from him a far higher style of choice. He prepares himself, however, his own ample punishment; for he has too much understanding not to sicken of mere personal allurements, and too much generosity to be flattered, or satisfied, by mere passive intellectual inferiority. Neither a mistress nor a slave can make him happy; a companion is what he requires; and for that, in a very few months, how vainly his secret soul may sigh, and think of our Camilla!'