She threw herself down upon the bed, hid her face with the counterpane, and wept, in desperate carelessness of the presence of Mrs. Mittin, and answering nothing that she said.
In affairs of this sort, Mrs. Mittin had a quickness of apprehension, which, though but the attribute of ready cunning, was not inferior to the keenest penetration, possessed, for deeper investigations, by characters of more solid sagacity. From the fear which Camilla, in her anguish, had uttered of seeing her father, she gathered, there must be some severe restriction in money concerns; and, without troubling herself to consider what they might be, saw that to aid her at this moment would be the highest obligation; and immediately set at work a brain as fertile in worldly expedients, as it was barren of intellectual endowments, in forming a plan of present relief, which she concluded would gain her a rich and powerful friend for life.
She was not long in suggesting a proposition, which Camilla started up eagerly to hear, almost breathless with the hope of any reprieve to her terrors.
Mrs. Mittin, amongst her numerous friends, counted a Mr. Clykes, a money-lender, a man, she said, of the first credit for such matters with people of fashion in any difficulty. If Camilla, therefore, would collect her debts, this gentleman would pay them, for a handsome premium, and handsome interest, till she was able, at her own full leisure, to return the principal, with a proper present.
Camilla nearly embraced her with rapture for this scheme. The premium she would collect as she could, and the interest she would pay from her allowance, certain that when her uncle was cleared from his embarrassments, her own might be revealed without any serious distress. She put, therefore, the affair wholly into the hands of Mrs. Mittin, besought her, the next morning, to demand all her Southampton bills, to add to them those for the rent and the stores of Higden, and then to transact the business with Mr. Clykes; promising to agree to whatever premium, interest, and present, he should demand, with endless acknowledgments to herself for so great a service.
She grieved to employ a person so utterly disagreeable to Edgar; but to avert immediate evil was ever resistless to her ardent mind.
The whole of the Southampton accounts were brought her early the next morning by the active Mrs. Mittin, who now concluded, that what she had conceived to be covetousness in Camilla, was only the fear of a hard tyrant of a father, who kept her so parsimoniously, that she could allow herself no indulgence, till the death of her uncle should endow her with her own rich inheritance.
Had this arrangement not taken place before the arrival of the bills, Camilla, upon beholding them, thought she should have been driven to complete distraction. The ear-rings and necklace, silver fringes and spangles, feathers, nosegay, and shoe-roses, with the other parts of the dress, and the fine Valencienne edging, came to thirty-three pounds. The cloak also, that cheapest thing in the world, was nine guineas; and various small articles, which Mrs. Mittin had occasionally brought in, and others with which Camilla could not dispense, came to another five pounds. To this, the rent for Higden added eighteen; and the bill of stores, which had been calculated at thirty, was sent in at thirty-seven.
The whole, therefore, with the sixteen pounds from Tunbridge, amounted to one hundred and eighteen pounds nine shillings.
Struck to the very soul with the idea of what she must have endured to have presented, at such a period, so large an account, either at Cleves or at Etherington, she felt lifted into paradise by the escape of this expedient, and lost sight of every possible future difficulty, in the relief of avoiding so severe a present penalty.