'The reproach,' answered she, solemnly; 'that, from me, all my family merit! the reproach of representing to me, that thousands resembled me! of assuring me I had nothing peculiar to myself, though I was so unlike all my family—of deluding me into utter ignorance of my unhappy defects, and then casting me, all unconscious and unprepared, into the wide world to hear them!'
She would now have shut herself into her book-closet; but Camilla, forcing her way, and almost kneeling to be heard, conjured her to drive such cruel ideas from her mind, and to treat the barbarous insults that she had suffered with the contempt they deserved.
'Camilla,' said she, firmly; 'I am no longer to be deceived nor trifled with. I will no more expose to the light a form and face so hideous:—I will retire from all mankind, and end my destined course in a solitude that no one shall discover.'
Camilla, terrified, besought her to form no such plan, bewailed the unfortunate adventure of the preceding day, inveighed against the inhuman women, and pleaded the love of all her family with the most energetic affection.
'Those women,' said she, calmly, 'are not to blame; they have been untutored, but not false; and they have only uttered such truths as I ought to have learnt from my cradle. My own blindness has been infatuated; but it sprung from inattention and ignorance.—It is now removed!—Leave me, Camilla; give notice to my Uncle he must find me some retreat. Tell all that has passed to my father. I will myself write to my mother—and when my mind is more subdued, and when sincerely and unaffectedly I can forgive you all from my heart, I may consent to see you again.'
She then positively insisted upon being left.
Camilla, penetrated with her undeserved, yet irremediable distress, still continued at her door, supplicating for re-admittance in the softest terms; but without any success till the second dinner bell summoned her down stairs. She then fervently called upon her sister to speak once more, and tell her what she must do, and what say?
Eugenia steadily answered: 'You have already my commission: I have no change to make in it.'
Unable to obtain anything further, she painfully descended: but the voice of her Uncle no sooner reached her ears from the dining parlour, than, shocked to convey to him so terrible a message, she again ran up stairs, and casting herself against her sister's door, called out 'Eugenia, I dare not obey you! would you kill my poor Uncle? My Uncle, who loves us all so tenderly? Would you afflict—would you make him unhappy?'
'No, not for the universe!' she answered, opening the door; and then, more gently, yet not less steadfastly, looking at her, 'I know,' she continued, 'you are all very good; I know all was meant for the best; I know I must be a monster not to love you for the very error to which I am a victim.—I forgive you therefore all! and I blush to have felt angry.—But yet—at the age of fifteen—at the instant of entering into the world—at the approach of forming a connection which—O Camilla! what a time, what a period, to discover—to know—that I cannot even be seen without being derided and offended!'