This succeeded with Edgar at this moment, for he had heard her voice, not her words: he began, therefore, himself. 'This good lady,' he said, 'seems bit with the rage of obliging, though not, I think, so heroically, as much to injure her interest. But surely she flatters herself with somewhat too high a recompence? The heart of Mrs. Berlinton is not, I fancy, framed for such a conquerer. But how, at the same time, is it possible conversation such as this should be heard under her roof? And how can it have come to pass that such a person....'
'Talk of her,' interrupted Camilla, recovering her breath, 'some other time. Let me now inquire ... have you burnt ... I hope so!... those foolish ... letters ... I put into your hands?...'
The countenance of Edgar was instantly overclouded. The mention of those letters brought fresh to his heart the bitterest, the most excruciating and intolerable pang it had ever experienced; it brought Camilla to his view no longer artless, pure, and single-minded, but engaged to, or trifling with, one man, while seriously accepting another. 'No, madam,' he solemnly said, 'I have not presumed so far. Their answers are not likely to meet with so violent a death, and it seemed to me that one part of the correspondence should be preserved for the elucidation of the other.'
Camilla felt stung by this reply, and tremulously answered, 'Give me them back, then, if you please, and I will take care to see them all demolished together, in the same flames. Meanwhile....'
'Are you sure,' interrupted Edgar, 'such a conflagration will be permitted? Does the man live who would have the philosophy ... the insensibility I must rather style it—ever to resign, after once possessing, marks so distinguishing of esteem? O, Camilla! I, at least, could not be that man!'
Cut to the soul by this question, which, though softened by the last phrase, she deemed severely cruel, she hastily exclaimed: 'Philosophy I have no right to speak of ... but as to insensibility ... who is the man that ever more can surprise me by its display? Let me take, however, this opportunity....'
A footman, opening the door, said, his lady had sent to beg an answer to her letter.
Camilla, in whom anger was momentary, but the love of justice permanent, rejoiced at an interruption which prevented her from speaking, with pique and displeasure, a sentence that must lose all its purpose if not uttered with mildness. She would write, she said, immediately; and, bidding the man get her pen and ink, went to the window to read her letter; with a formal bow of apology to Edgar as she passed him.
'I have made you angry?' cried he, when the man was gone; 'and I hate myself to have caused you a moment's pain. But you must feel for me, Camilla, in the wound you have inflicted! you know not the disorder of mind produced by a sudden, unlooked-for transition from felicity to perplexity, ... from serenity to misery!...'
Camilla felt touched, yet continued reading, or rather rapidly repeating to herself the words of her letter, without comprehending, or even seeking to comprehend, the meaning of one sentence.