During these preparations, Camilla was summoned back to the dining-room to receive Mr. Westwyn.
She did not hear this call with serenity. The danger which, however unwittingly, she had caused his son, and the shocking circumstances which were its foundation, tingled her cheeks, and confounded her wish of making acknowledgments, with an horror that such an obligation could be possible.
The door of the dining-room was open, and as soon as her steps were heard, Mr. Westwyn came smiling forth to receive her. She hung back involuntarily; but, pacing up to her, and taking her hand, 'Well, my good young lady,' he cried, 'I have brought you my son; but he's no boaster, that I can assure you, for though I told him how you wanted him to come to you, and was so good as to say you were so much obliged to him, I can't make him own he has ever seen you in his life; which I tell him is carrying his modesty over far; I don't like affectation ... I have no taste for it.'
Camilla, discovering by this speech, as well as by his pleased and tranquil manner, that he had escaped hearing of the intended duel, and that his son was still ignorant whose cause he had espoused, ardently wished to avert farther shame by concealing herself; and, step by step, kept retreating back towards the room of Eugenia; though she could not disengage her hand from the old gentleman, who, trying to draw her on, said: 'Come, my dear! don't go away. Though my son won't confess what he has done for you, he can't make me forget that you were such a dear soul as to tell me yourself, of his good behaviour, and of your having such a kind opinion of him. And I have been telling him, and I can assure you I'll keep my word, that if he has done a service to the niece of my dear old friend, Sir Hugh Tyrold, it shall value him fifty pound a-year more to his income, if I straighten myself never so much. For a lad, that knows how to behave in that manner, will never spend his money so as to make his old father ashamed of him. And that's a good thing for a man to know.'
'Indeed, sir, this is some mistake,' said the young man himself, now advancing into the passage, while Camilla was stammering out an excuse from entering; 'it's some great mistake; I have not the honour to know....'
He was going to add Miss Tyrold, but he saw her at the same moment, and instantly recollecting her face, stopt, blushed, and looked amazed.
The retreating effort of Camilla, her shame and her pride, all subsided by his view, and gave place to the more generous feelings of gratitude for his intuitive good opinion, and emotion for the risk he had run in her defence: and with an expression of captivating sweetness in her eyes and manner, 'That you did not know me,' she cried, 'makes the peculiarity of your goodness, which, indeed, I am more sensible to than I can express.'
'Why, there! there, now! there!' cried Mr. Westwyn, while his son, enchanted to find whose character he had sustained, bowed almost to the ground with respectful gratitude for such thanks; 'only but listen! she says the very same things to your face, that she said behind your back! though I am afraid, it's only to please an old father; for if not, I can't for my life find out any reason why you should deny it. Come, Hal, speak out, Hal!'
Equally at a loss how either to avow or evade what had passed in the presence of Camilla, young Westwyn began a stammering and awkward apology; but Camilla, feeling doubly his forbearance, said: 'Silence may in you be delicate ... but in me it would be graceless.' Then, turning from him to old Mr. Westwyn, 'you may be proud, sir,' she cried, 'of your son! It was the honour of an utter stranger he was protecting, as helpless as she was unknown at the time she excited his interest; nor had he even in view this poor mede he now receives of her thanks!'
'My dearest Hal!' cried Mr. Westwyn, wringing him by the hand; 'if you have but one small grain of regard for me, don't persist in denying this! I'd give the last hundred pounds I had in the world to be sure it was true!'