The little time which remained was given wholly to packing and preparing; and continued employment hid from Mr. Tyrold her emotion, which encreased every moment, till the carriage of Sir Hugh stopt at the gate. Lost, then, to all sensation, but the horrour of the avowal that must intervene 'ere they met again, with incertitude if again he would see her with the same kindness, she flew into his arms, rather agonised than affectionate; kissed his hands with fervour, kissed every separate finger, rested upon his shoulder, hid her face in his bosom, caught and pressed to her lips even the flaps of his coat, and scarce restrained herself from bending to kiss his feet; yet without uttering a word, without even shedding a tear.
Strangely surprised, and deeply affected, Mr. Tyrold, straining her to his breast, said: 'Why, my dear child, why, my dearest Camilla, if thus agitated by our parting, do you leave me?'
This question brought her to recollection, by the impossibility she found to answer it; she tore herself, therefore, away from him, embraced Lavinia, and hurried into the coach.
BOOK X
CHAPTER I
A Surprise
Camilla strove to check her grief upon entering the carriage, in which Miss Margland had again the charge of the young party; but the interrogatory of her Father, Why will you leave me? was mentally repeated without ceasing. Ah! why, indeed! thought she, at a moment when every filial duty called more than ever for my stay!—Well, might he not divine the unnatural reason! can I believe it myself?—Believe such an hour arrived?—when my Mother—the best of Mothers!—is expected—when she returns to her family, Camilla seeks another abode! is not this a dream? and may I not one day awake from it?
Miss Margland was in the highest good humour at this expedition: and Indiana was still enraptured to visit London, from old expectations which she knew not how to relinquish; though they were fixed to no point, and as fantastic as vague. Eugenia, whose dejection had made Sir Hugh press her into the party, found nothing in it to revive her; and Camilla entered Grosvenor-square with keen dissatisfaction of every sort. The cautions of Edgar against Mrs. Berlinton broke into all the little relief she might have experienced upon again seeing her. She had meant to keep his final exhortations constantly in her mind, and to make all his opinions and counsels the rule and measure of her conduct: but a cruel perversity of events seemed to cast her every action into an apparent defiance of his wishes.