One solitary offer to Eugenia, of an every way ruined young nobleman, though a blast both to the settlement and the peace of Indiana, was to herself wholly nugatory. Intent, at that period, upon dedicating for ever to Melmond her virgin heart, she was sorry, upon his account, for the application, but gave it not, upon her own, a moment's consideration. This proposition was made upon her first arrival, and was followed by no other. She was then, by the account given to the master of the ceremonies by Miss Margland, regarded as the heiress of Cleves: but, almost immediately after, the report spread by Mrs. Mittin, that Camilla was the true heiress, gained such ground amongst the shopkeepers, and thence travelled so rapidly from gossip to gossip, and house to house, that Eugenia was soon no more thought of; though a species of doubt was cast upon the whole party, from the double assertion, that kept off from Camilla, also, the fortune seekers of the place.
But another rumour got abroad, that soon entirely cleared Eugenia, not merely of lovers but acquaintances; namely, her studies with Dr. Orkborne. This was a prevailing theme of spite with Miss Margland, when the Doctor had neglected and displeased her; and a topic always at hand for her spleen, when it was angered by other circumstances not so easy of blame or of mention.
This, shortly, made Eugenia stared at still more than her peculiar appearance. The misses, in tittering, ran away from the learned lady; the beaux contemptuously sneering, rejoiced she was too ugly to take in any poor fellow to marry her. Some imagined her studies had stinted her growth; and all were convinced her education had made her such a fright.
Of the whole party, the only one who quitted Southampton in spirits was Dr. Orkborne. He was delighted to be no longer under the dominion of Miss Margland, who, though she never left him tranquil in the possession of all he valued, his leisure, and his books and papers, eternally annoyed him with reproaches upon his absence, non-attendance, and ignorance of high life; asking always, when angry, 'If any one had ever heard who was his grandfather?'
The doctor, in return, despising, like most who have it not, whatever belonged to noble birth, regarded her and her progenitors as the pest of the human race; frequently, when incensed by interruption, exclaiming, 'Where intellect is uncultivated, what is man better than a brute, or woman than an idiot?'
Nor was his return to his own room, books, and hours, under the roof of the indulgent Sir Hugh, the only relief of this removal: he knew not of the previous departure of Dr. Marchmont, and he was glad to quit a spot where he was open to a comparison which he felt to be always to his disadvantage.
So much more powerful and more prominent is character than education, that no two men could be more different than Dr. Marchmont and Dr. Orkborne, though the same university had finished their studies, and the same passion, pursuit, and success in respect to learning, had raised and had spread their names and celebrity. The first, with all his scholastic endowments, was a man of the world, and a grace to society; the second, though in erudition equally respectable, was wholly lost to the general community, and alive only with his pen and his books. They enjoyed, indeed, in common, that happy and often sole reward of learned labours, the privilege of snatching some care from time, some repining from misfortune, by seizing for themselves, and their own exclusive use, the whole monopoly of mind; but they employed it not to the same extension. The things and people of this lower sphere were studiously, by Dr. Orkborne, sunk in oblivion by the domineering prevalence of the alternate transport and toil of intellectual occupation; Dr. Marchmont, on the contrary, though his education led to the same propensities, still held his fellow creatures to be of higher consideration than their productions. Without such extravagance in the pursuit of his studies, he knew it the happy province of literary occupations, where voluntary, to absorb worldly solicitudes, and banish for a while even mental anxieties; and though the charm may be broken by every fresh intrusion of calamity, it unites again with the first retirement, and, without diminishing the feelings of social life, has a power, from time to time, to set aside their sufferings.