Anger with Camilla was a quick, but short-lived sensation; and this sudden change in the Baronet from conceit to respect, produced a change equally sudden in herself from disdain to inquietude. Though mortified in the first moment by his vanity, it was less seriously painful to her than any belief that under it was couched a disposition towards a really steady regard. With Mrs. Arlbery she was but slightly offended, though certain she had been assuring him of all the success he could demand: her way of thinking upon the subject had been openly avowed, and she did justice to the kindness of her motives.
No opportunity, however, arose to mention the return of the draft; Mrs. Arlbery saw displeasure in her air, and not doubting she had heard what had dropt from Sir Sedley, thought the moment unfavorable for a tête-à-tête, and resolutely kept her place, till Camilla herself, weary of useless waiting, left the room.
Following her then to her chamber, 'My dear Miss Tyrold,' she cried, 'do not let your extreme youth stand in the way of all your future life. A Baronet, rich, young, and amiable, is upon the very point of becoming your slave for ever; yet, because you discover him to be a little restive in the last agonies of his liberty, you are eager, in the high-flown disdain of juvenile susceptibility, to cast him and his fortune away; as if both were such every-day baubles, that you might command or reject them without thought of future consequence.'
'Indeed no, dear madam; I am not actuated by pride or anger; I owe too much to Sir Sedley to feel either above a moment, even where I think them ... pardon me!... justly excited. But I should ill pay my debt, by accepting a lasting attachment, where certain I can return nothing but lasting, eternal, unchangeable indifference.'
'You sacrifice, then, both him and yourself, to the fanciful delicacy of a first love?'
'No, indeed!' cried she blushing. 'I have no thought at all but of the single life. And I sincerely hope Sir Sedley has no serious intentions towards me; for my obligations to him are so infinite, I should be cruelly hurt to appear to him ungrateful.'
'You would appear to him, I confess, a little surprising,' said Mrs. Arlbery, laughing; 'for diffidence certainly is not his weak part. However, with all his foibles, he is a charming creature, and prepossession only can blind you to his merit.'
Camilla again denied the charge, and strove to prevail with her to undeceive the Baronet from any false expectations. But she protested she would not be accessary to so much after-repentance; and left her.
The business now wore a very serious aspect to Camilla. Mrs. Arlbery avowed she thought Sir Sedley in earnest, and he knew she had herself heard him speak with security of his success. The bullfinch had gone far, but the draft seemed to have riveted the persuasion. The bird it was now impossible to return till her departure from Tunbridge; but she resolved not to defer another moment putting upon her brother alone the obligation of the draft, to stop the further progress of such dangerous inference.
Hastily, therefore, she wrote to him the following note: