'Is my brother well, Jacob?' cried Mr. Tyrold.
'Why, pretty well, considering, Sir,—but these are vast bad times for us!'
'O! if my uncle is but well,' cried Camilla, relieved from her first dreadful doubt, 'all, I hope, will do right!'
'Why, ay, Miss,' said Jacob, smiling, 'I knew you'd be master's best comfort; and so I told him, and so he says, for that matter himself, as I've got to tell you from him. But, for all that, he takes on prodigious bad. I never saw him in the like way, except just that time when Miss Geny had the small pox.'
They all supplicated him to forbear further comments, and then gathered, that a money-agent, employed by young Lynmere, had just arrived at Cleves; where, with bitter complaints, he related that, having been duped into believing him heir to Sir Hugh Tyrold, he had been prevailed with to grant him money, from time to time, to pay certain bills, contracted not only there, but in London, for goods sent thence by his order, to the amount of near thirteen hundred pounds, without the interest, of which he should give a separate account; that he had vainly applied to the young gentleman for re-imbursement, who finally assured him he was just disinherited by his uncle. No hope, therefore, remained to save him from the ruin of this affair, but in the compassion of the Baronet, which he now came to most humbly solicit.
While Mr. Tyrold, in silent surprise and concern, listened to an account that placed his brother in difficulties so similar to his own, Camilla, sinking back in her chair; looked pale, looked almost lifeless. The history of the debts she already knew, and had daily expected to hear; but the circumstance of the money-lender, and the delusion concerning the inheritance, so resembled her own terrible, and yet unknown story, that she felt personally involved in all the shame and horror of the relation.
Mr. Tyrold, who believed her suffering all for her uncle, made further enquiries, while Lavinia tenderly sustained her. 'Don't take on so, dear Miss,' said Jacob, 'for all our hope is in you, as Master and I both said; and he bid me tell your papa, that if he'd only give young 'Squire Mandlebert a jog, to egg him on, that he might not be so shilly shally, as soon as ever the wedding's over, he'd accept his kind invitation to Beech Park, and bide there till he got clear, as one may say.'
Mr. Tyrold now required no assigned motive for the excessive distress of his daughter, and hastened to turn Jacob from this too terribly trying subject, by saying, 'My brother then means to pay these demands?'
'Lauk, yes, Sir! his honour pays every thing as any body asks him; only he says he don't know how, because of having no more money, being so hard run with all our preparations we have been making this last fortnight.'
Camilla, with every moment encreasing agitation, hid her face against Lavinia; but Mr. Tyrold, with some energy, said: 'The interest, at least, I hope he will not discharge; for those dangerous vultures, who lie in wait for the weak or erring, to encourage their frailties or vices, by affording them means to pursue them, deserve much severer punishment, than merely losing a recompense for their iniquitous snares.'