She started and rose; she strove to chace the tears from her eyes without wiping them, and asked what he had done with Dr. Orkborne?
'You are in grief!' cried he in a tone of sympathy; 'some evil has befallen you!... let me ask....'
'No; I am only waiting for my sisters. They have just received letters from Lisbon.'
'You have been weeping! you are weeping now! why do you turn away from me? I will not obtrusively demand your confidence ... yet, could I give you the most distant idea what a weight it might remove from my mind, ... you would find it difficult to deny yourself the pleasure of doing so much good!'
The tears of Camilla now streamed afresh. Words so kind from Edgar, the cold, the hard-hearted Edgar, surprised and overset her; yet she endeavoured to hide her face, and made an effort to pass him.
'Is not this a little unkind?' cried he, gravely; 'however, I have no claim to oppose you.'
'Unkind!' she repeated, and involuntarily turning to him, shewed a countenance so disconsolate, that he lost his self-control, and taking her reluctant hand, said: 'O Camilla! torture me no longer!'
Almost transfixed with astonishment, she looked at him for a moment in a speechless wonder; but the interval of doubt was short; the character of Edgar, for unalienable steadiness, unalterable honour, was fixed in her mind, like 'truths from holy writ,' and she knew, with certainty incontrovertible, that his fate was at her disposal, from the instant he acknowledged openly her power over his feelings.
Every opposite sensation, that with violence the most ungovernable could encounter but to combat, now met in her bosom, elevating her to rapture, harrowing her with terror, menacing even her understanding. The most exquisite wish of her heart seemed accorded at a period so nearly too late for its acceptance, that her faculties, bewildered, confused, deranged, lost the capacity of clearly conceiving if still she were a free agent or not.
He saw her excess of disorder with alarm; he sought to draw her again to her seat; but she put her hand upon her forehead, and leant it against the bark of the tree.