She arrived at Alresford so late, with the return horses, that she was forced to order a room there for the night.
Though too much occupied to weigh well her lonely and improper situation, at an inn, and at such hours, she was too uneasy to go to bed, and too miserable for sleep. She sat up, without attempting to read, write, or employ herself, patrolling her chamber in mournful rumination.
Nearly as soon as it was light, she proceeded, and arrived at the house of Bellamy as the servants were opening the window-shutters.
Fearfully she asked who was at home; and hearing only their mistress, sent for Molly Mill, and enquired for the answer from Etherington; but the lad had not yet brought any. She begged her to run to the inn, to know what had detained him; and then, ordering the chaise to wait, went to her sister.
Eugenia was gently rejoiced to see her, though evidently with encreased personal unhappiness. Camilla would fain have spared her the history of the desertion of Cleves; but it was an act that in its own nature must be public; and she had no other way to account for her so speedy return.
Eugenia heard it with the most piercing affliction; and, in the fulness of her heart, from this new blow, acknowledged the rapacity of Bellamy, and the barbarity with which he now scrupled not to avow the sordid motives of his marriage; cruelly lamenting the extreme simplicity with which she had been beguiled into a belief of the sincerity and violence of his attachment. 'For myself, however,' she continued, 'I now cease to murmur. How can misfortune, personally, cut me deeper? But with pity, indeed, I think of a new victim!'
She then put into her sister's hand a written paper she had picked up the preceding evening in her room, and which, having no direction, and being in the handwriting of Mrs. Berlinton, she had thought was a former note to herself, accidentally dropt: but the first line undeceived her.
'I yield, at length, O Bellamy, to the eloquence of your friendship! on Friday,—at one o'clock, I will be there—as you appoint.'
Camilla, almost petrified, read the lines. She knew better than her sister the plan to which this was the consent; which to have been given after her representations and urgency, appeared so utterly unjustifiable, that, with equal grief and indignation, she gave up this unhappy friend as wilfully lost; and her whole heart recoiled from ever again entering her doors.
Retracing, nevertheless, her many amiable qualities, she knew not how, without further effort, to leave her to her threatening fate; and determined, at all risks, to put her into the hands of her brother, whose timely knowledge of her danger might rescue her from public exposure. She wrote therefore the following note: