Her father saw it too, with less surprise, but more pain. He knew her short and voluntary absence from her friends could not excite them: his heart ached with paternal concern for her; and, motioning everybody else to remain in the hall, he walked with her to the carriage himself, saying, in a low voice, as he put her in, 'Be of better courage, my dearest child. Endeavour to take pleasure where you are going—and to forget what you are leaving: and, if you wish to feel or to give contentment upon earth, remember always, you must seek to make circumstance contribute to happiness, not happiness subservient to circumstance.'
Camilla, bathing his hand with her tears, promised this maxim should never quit her mind till they met again.
She then drove off.
'Yes,' she cried, 'I must indeed study it; Edgar cares no more what becomes of me! resentment next to antipathy has taken place of his friendship and esteem!'
She wrote down in her pocket-book the last words of her father; she resolved to read them daily, and to make them the current lesson of her future and disappointed life.
Lionel, too impatient to wait for the afternoon, was already at the Grove, and handed her from the chaise. But, stopping her in the portico, 'Well,' he cried, 'where's my draft?'
'Before I give it you,' said she, seriously, and walking from the servants, 'I must entreat to speak a few words to you.'
'You have really got it, then?' cried he, in a rapture; 'you are a charming girl! the most charming girl I know in the world! I won't take your poor twenty pounds: I would not touch it for the world. But come, where's the draft? Is it for the two or the three?'
'For the two; and surely, my dear Lionel—'