Miss Margland appealed to all present upon the indecorum of a lady's being kept to witness such unbecoming violence, and upon the unheard-of inattention of the Doctor: but a short, 'Certainly!—' 'To be sure, ma'am!—' or, 'It's very shocking indeed!' with a hasty decampment from her neighbourhood, was all of sympathy she procured.
The entrance, at length, of the master of the house, stopt the affray, by calling off the waiter. Clermont, then, though wishing to extirpate old Westwyn from the earth, and ready to eat his own flesh with fury at the double disgrace he had endured, affected a loud halloo, as if he had been contending for his amusement; and protesting Bob, the waiter, was a fine fellow, went off with great apparent satisfaction.
'Now, then, at least, sir,' cried Miss Margland, imperiously to the Doctor, who, still ruminating upon the late contest, kept his seat, 'I suppose you'll condescend to take care of me to the coach?'
'These modern clothes are very much in the way,' said the Doctor, gravely; 'and give a bad effect to attitudes.' He rose, however, but not knowing what to take care of a lady to a coach meant, stood resolutely still, till she was forced, in desperation, to walk on alone. He then slowly followed, keeping many paces behind, notwithstanding her continually looking back; and when, with a heavy sigh at her hard fate, she got, unassisted, into the carriage, where her young ladies were waiting, he tranquilly mounted after her, tolerably reconciled to the loss of his evening, by some new annotations it had suggested for his work, relative to the games of antiquity.
CHAPTER X
A Youthful Effusion
Camilla now thought herself safe in harbour; the storms all over, the dangers all past, and but a light gale or two wanting to make good her landing on the bosom of permanent repose. This gale, this propitious gale, she thought ready to blow at her call; for she deemed it no other than the breath of jealousy. She had seen Edgar, though he knew her to be protected, follow her to the coach, and she had seen, by the light afforded from the lamps of the carriage, that her safety from the crowd and tumult was not the sole object of his watchfulness, since though that, at the instant she turned round, was obviously secure, his countenance exhibited the strongest marks of disturbance. The secret spring, therefore, she now thought, that was to re-unite them, was in her own possession.
All the counsels of Mrs. Arlbery upon this subject occurred to her; and imagining she had hitherto erred from a simple facility, she rejoiced in the accident which had pointed her to a safer path, and shewn her that, in the present disordered state of the opinions of Edgar, the only way to a lasting accommodation was to alarm his security, by asserting her own independence.
Her difficulty, however, was still considerable as to the means. The severe punishment she had received, and the self blame and penitence she had incurred, from her experiment with Sir Sedley Clarendel, all rendered, too, abortive, by Edgar's contempt of the object, determined her to suffer no hopes, no feelings of her own, to engross her ever more from weighing those of another. The end, therefore, of her deliberation was to shew general gaiety, without appropriate favour, and to renew solicitude on his part by a displayed ease of mind on her own.