Camilla, distressed and confused, sought to parry the whole as raillery: but Mrs. Arlbery would not be turned aside from her subject and purpose. 'I languish, I own,' cried she, 'to see that frozen youth worked up into a little sensibility. I have an instinctive aversion to those cold, haughty, drawing-back characters, who are made up of the egotism of looking out for something that is wholly devoted to them, and that has not a breath to breathe that is not a sigh for their perfections.'
'O! this is far ...' Camilla began, meaning to say, far from the character of Mandlebert; but ashamed of undertaking his defence, she stopt short, and only mentally added, Even excellence such as his cannot, then, withstand prejudice!
'If there is any way,' continued Mrs. Arlbery, 'of animating him for a moment out of himself, it can only be by giving him a dread of some other. The poor Major does his best; but he is not rich enough to be feared, unless he were more attractive. Sir Sedley will seem more formidable. Countenance, therefore, his present propensity to wear your chains, till Mandlebert perceives that he is putting them on; and then ... mount to the rising ground you ought to tread, and shew, at once, your power and your disinterestedness, by turning from the handsome Baronet and all his immense wealth, to mark ... since you are determined to indulge it ... your unbiassed preference for Mandlebert.'
Camilla, irresistibly appeased by a picture so flattering to all her best feelings, and dearest wishes, looked down; angry with herself to find she felt no longer angry with Mrs. Arlbery.
Mrs. Arlbery, perceiving a point gained, determined to enforce the blow, and then leave her to her reflections.
'Mandlebert is a creature whose whole composition is a pile of accumulated punctilios. He will spend his life in refining away his own happiness: but do not let him refine away yours. He is just a man to bewitch an innocent and unguarded young woman from forming any other connexion, and yet, when her youth and expectations have been sacrificed to his hesitation, ... to conceive he does not use her ill in thinking of her no more, because he has entered into no verbal engagement. If his honour cannot be arraigned of breaking any bond, ... What matters merely breaking her heart?'
She then left the room; but Camilla dwelt upon nothing she had uttered except the one dear and inviting project of proving disinterestedness to Edgar. 'O! if once,' she cried, 'I could annihilate every mercenary suspicion! If once I could shew Edgar that his situation has no charms for me ... and it has none! none! then, indeed, I am his equal, though I am nothing, ... equal in what is highest, in mind, in spirit, in sentiment!
From this time the whole of her behaviour became coloured by this fascinating idea; and a scheme which, if proposed to her under its real name of coquetry, she would have fled and condemned with antipathy, when presented to her as a means to mark her freedom from sordid motives, she adopted with inconsiderate fondness. The sight, therefore, of Edgar, wherever she met him, became now the signal for adding spirit to the pleasure with which, already, and without any design, she had attended to the young Baronet. Exertion gave to her the gaiety of which solicitude had deprived her, and she appeared, in the eyes of Sir Sedley, every day more charming. She indulged him with the history of her adventure at the house of Mr. Dubster, and his prevalent taste for the ridiculous made the account enchant him. He cast off, in return, all airs of affectation, when he conversed with her separately; and though still, in all mixt companies, they were resumed, the real integrity, as well as indifference of her heart, made that a circumstance but to stimulate this new species of intercourse, by representing it to be equally void of future danger to them both.
All this, however, failed of its desired end. Edgar never saw her engaged by Sir Sedley, but he thought her youthfully grateful, and esteemed her the more, or beheld her as a mere coquette, and ceased to esteem her at all. But never for a moment was any personal uneasiness excited by their mutually increasing intimacy. The conversations he had held, both with the Baronet and herself, had satisfied him that neither entertained one serious thought of the other; and he took, therefore, no interest in their acquaintance, beyond that which was always alive,—a vigilant concern for the manner in which it might operate upon her disposition.