'Ah! you know me, then! You know my connexions and my situation!' cried she, hiding her face on Camilla's bosom: 'tell me, at least, tell me, you do not therefore contemn and abhor me?'
'Heaven forbid!' said Camilla, terrified at such a preparation; 'what can I hear that can give you so cruel an idea?'
'Alas! know you not I have prophaned at the altar my plighted vows to the most odious of men? That I have formed an alliance I despise? and that I bear a name I think of with disgust, and hate ever to own?'
Camilla, thunderstruck, answered; 'No, indeed! I know nothing of all this!'
'Ah! guard yourself, then, well,' cried she, bursting into tears, 'from a similar fate! My friends are kind and good, but the temptation of seeing me rich beguiled them. I was disinterested and contented myself, but young and inexperienced; and I yielded to their pleadings, unaware of their consequences. Alas! I was utterly ignorant both of myself and the world! I knew not how essential to my own peace was an amiable companion; and I knew not, then,—that the world contained one just formed to make me happy!'
She now hung down her head, weeping and desponding. Camilla sought to sooth her, but was so amazed, so fearful, and so perplext, she scarce knew what either to say or to think.
The fair mourner, at length, a little recovering, added: 'Let me not agitate your gentle bosom with my sorrows. I regard you as an angel sent to console them; but it must be by mitigating, not partaking of them.'
Camilla was sensibly touched; and though strangely at a loss what to judge, felt her affections deeply interested.
'I dreaded,' she continued, 'to tell you my name, for I dreaded to sink myself into your contempt, by your knowledge of an alliance you must deem so mercenary. 'Twas folly to hope you would not hear it; yet I wished first to obtain, at least, your good will. The dear lost name of Melmond is all I love to pronounce! That name, I believe, is known to you; so may be, also, perhaps, my brother's unhappy story?'
Melmond, she then said, believing Miss Lynmere betrothed to Mr. Mandlebert, had quitted Hampshire in misery, to finish his vacation in Wales, with their mutual friends. There he heard that the rumour was false; and would instantly have returned and thrown himself at the feet of the young lady, by whose cousin, Mr. Lionel Tyrold, he had been told she was to inherit a large fortune; when this second report, also, was contradicted, and he learnt that Miss Lynmere had almost nothing; 'My brother,' added she, 'with the true spirit of true sentiment, was but the more urgent to pursue her; but our relations interfered—and he, like me, is doomed to endless anguish!'