One of the maids then came to say she had forgotten to inform her, that, some time after she had set out for Lord Pervil's a stranger, much muffled up, and with a hat flapped over his face so as wholly to hide it, had enquired for her, and seemed much disturbed when he heard she was at the ball, but said he would call again the next day at noon.
No conjecture occurred to Camilla but that this must be Edgar; it was contrary to all probability; but no other image could find way to her mind. She hastened, inexpressibly perturbed, to her sister, determining to be at home before twelve o'clock, and fashioning to herself all the varieties such a meeting could afford; every one of which, however they began, ended regularly with a reconciliation.
She found Eugenia weeping in bed. She embraced her with the extremest tenderness: 'Ah my sister!' said the unhappy mourner, 'I weep not for my disappointment, great as it may be—and I do not attempt describing it!—it is but my secondary sorrow. I weep, Camilla, for my own infatuation! for the folly, the blindness of which I find myself culpable. O Camilla! is it possible I could ever—for a moment, a single moment, suppose Melmond could willingly be mine! could see his exquisite susceptibility of every thing that is most perfect, yet persuade myself, he could take, by choice, the poor Eugenia for his wife! the mangled, deformed,—unfortunate Eugenia!'
Camilla, touched to the heart, wept now more than her sister. 'That Eugenia,' she cried, 'has but to be known, to leave all beauty, all figure, every exterior advantage aloof, by the nobler, the more just superiority of intrinsic worth. Let our estimates but be mental, and who will not be proud to be placed in parallel with Eugenia?'
She was then beginning her own sad relation, when an unopened letter upon the toilette table caught her eye. It had been placed there by Molly Mill, who thought her mistress asleep. Struck by the shape of the seal, Camilla rose to examine it: what was her palpitation, then, to see the cypher E M, and, turning to the other side, to perceive the hand writing of Edgar!
She put it into her sister's hand, with expectation too big for speech. Eugenia opened it, and they read it silently together.
To Miss Eugenia Tyrold.
Southampton.
'Tis yet but a short time—in every account but my own—since I thought myself forming a legal claim to address Miss Eugenia Tyrold as my sister. Every other claim to that affectionate and endearing title has been hers beyond her own memory; hers by the filial love I bear her venerated parents; hers, by the tender esteem due to the union of almost every virtue. These first and early ties must remain for ever. Disappointment here cannot pierce her barbarous shafts, fortune cannot wanton in reversing, nor can time dissolve them.——
'O Edgar!' exclaimed Camilla, stopping the reading, and putting her hand, as in benediction, upon the paper, 'do you deign to talk of disappointment? do you condescend to intimate you are unhappy? Ah, my Eugenia, you shall clear this dreadful error!—'tis to you he applies—you shall be peace-maker; restorer!'
Eugenia dried her tears at the thought of so sweet an office, and they read on.
Of the other—yet nearer claim, I will not speak. You have probably known longer than myself, its annihilation, and I will not pain your generous heart with any view of my sufferings in such a deprivation. I write but to take with my pen the leave I dare not trust myself to take by word of mouth; to wish to your opening prospects all the happiness that has flown mine, and to entreat you to answer for me to the whole of your loved family, that its name is what, through life, my ear with most reverence will hear, my heart with most devotion will love.
Edgar Mandlebert.