Camilla astonished, and Mrs. Berlinton silenced, waited, in an unpleasant pause, the event.
Eugenia, absorbed in thought, neither spoke to, nor looked at them, nor moved, till the door opened, and Melmond, who durst not refuse so direct a summons, though he would have preferred any punishment to obeying it, blushing, bowing, and trembling, entered the room.
She then started, half heaved, and half checked a sigh, took a folded note out of her pocket-book, and with a faint smile, said, 'I fear my desire must have been painful to you; but you see me now for the last time—I hope!—with any ill-will.'
She stopt for breath to go on; Melmond, amazed, striving vainly to articulate one word of excuse, one profession even of respect.
'Believe me, Sir,' she then continued, 'surprise was the last sensation I experienced upon a late ... transaction. My extraordinary personal defects and deformity have been some time known to me, though—I cannot tell how—I had the weakness or vanity not to think of them as I ought to have done!—--But I see I give you uneasiness, and therefore I will be more concise.'
Melmond, confounded, had bowed down his head not to look at her, while Camilla and Mrs. Berlinton both wept.
'The sentiments, Sir,' she then went on, 'of my cousin have never been declared to me; but it is not very difficult to me to divine what they may be. All that is certain, is the unkindness of Fortune, which forbids her to listen, or you to plead to them. This, Sir, shall be my care'—she stopt a moment, looking paler, and wanting voice; but presently recovering, proceeded—'my happiness, let me say, to endeavour to rectify. I have much influence with my kind uncle; can I doubt, when I represent to him that I have just escaped making two worthy people wretched, he will deny aiding me to make them happy? No! the residence already intended at Cleves will still be open, though one of its parties will be changed. But as my uncle, in a manner unexampled, has bound himself, in my favour, from any future disposition of what he possesses, I have ventured, Sir, upon this paper, to obviate any apprehensions of your friends, for the unhappy time when that generous uncle can no longer act for himself.'
She then unfolded, and gave him the paper, which contained these words:
'I here solemnly engage myself, if Miss Indiana Lynmere accepts, with the consent of Sir Hugh Tyrold, the hand of Frederic Melmond, to share with them, so united, whatever fortune or estate I may be endowed with, to the end of my life, and to bequeath them the same equal portion by will after my death.
Signed. Eugenia Tyrold.'
Unable to read, yet conceiving the purport of the writing, Melmond was at her feet. She endeavoured to raise him, and though extremely affected, said, with an air of some pleasantry, 'Shew less surprise, Sir, or I shall conclude you thought me as frightful within as without! But no! Providence is too good to make the mind necessarily deformed with the body.'