CHAPTER VIII
Ways to the Heart
All pleasure to Camilla was completely over from the moment that Edgar disappeared.
When she returned to Mount Pleasant, Mrs. Arlbery, whom she found alone, said, 'Did I not understand that you were going to dance with Mr. Mandlebert? How chanced he to leave you? We were kept ages waiting for the coach; and I saw him pass by, and walk off.'
Camilla, colouring, related the history of the cotillon; and said, she feared, not knowing how she had been circumstanced, he was displeased.
'Displeased!' cried Mrs. Arlbery, laughing; 'and do you, at seventeen, suffer a man to be displeased? How can you do worse when you are fifty? Know your own power more truly, and use it better. Men, my dear, are all spoilt by humility, and all conquered by gaiety. Amuse and defy them!—attend to that maxim, and you will have the world at your feet.'
'I have no such ambition: ... but I should be sensibly hurt to make an old friend think ill of me.'
'When an old friend,' said Mrs. Arlbery, archly, 'happens to be a young man, you must conduct yourself with him a little like what you are; that is, a young woman. And a young woman is never in her proper place, if such sort of old friends are not taught to know their own. From the instant you permit them to think of being offended, they become your masters; and you will find it vastly more convenient to make them your slaves.'
Camilla pretended to understand this in a mere general sense, and wished her good night.