Camilla now recollected the eldest little Higden, the washerwoman's niece, and kindly enquired after her father, her aunt, and family.
'O, they all does pure now. My dad's had no more mishaps, and he hopes, please God, to get on pretty well.'
'Sweet hearing!' cried Camilla, 'all my purposes have not, then, been frustrated!'
With added satisfaction she learnt also that the little girl had a good place, and a kind mistress. She begged her to hasten the Belfont messenger, giving her in charge a short note for Eugenia, with a request for the Etherington letter. She had spent nothing in London, save in some small remembrances to one or two of Mrs. Berlinton's servants; and though her chaise-hire had now almost emptied her purse, she thought every expence preferable to either lengthening her suspense, or her residence on the road.
In answer to the demand of what she would be pleased to have, she then ordered tea. She had taken no regular meal for two days; and for two nights had not even been in bed. But the wretchedness of her mind seemed to render her invulnerable to fatigue.
The shaken state of her nerves warped all just consideration of the impropriety of her present sojourn. Her judgment had no chance, where it had her feelings to combat, and in the despondence of believing herself parentally rejected, she was indifferent to appearances, and desperate upon all other events: nor was she brought to any recollection, till she was informed that the messenger, [who] she had concluded was half way to Belfont, could not set out till the next morning: this small and private inn not being able to furnish a man and horse at shorter warning.
To pass a second night at an inn, seemed, even in the calculations of her own harassed faculties, utterly improper; and thus, driven to extremity, she forced herself to order a chaise for home; though with a repugnance to so compulsatory a meeting, that made her wish to be carried in it a corpse.
The tardy prudence of the character naturally rash, commonly arrives but to point repentance that it came not before. The only pair of horses the little inn afforded, were now out upon other duty, and would not return till the next day.
Almost to herself incredible seemed now her situation. She was compelled to order a bed, and to go up stairs to a small chamber: but she could not even wish to take any rest. 'I am an outcast,' she cried, 'to my family; my Mother would rather not see me; my Father forbears to demand me; and he—dearer to me than life!—by whom I was once chosen, has forgotten me!—How may I support my heavy existence? and when will it end?
Overpowered, nevertheless, by fatigue, in the middle of the night, she [lay] down in her cloaths: but her slumbers were so broken by visions of reproach, conveyed through hideous forms, and in menaces the most terrific, that she gladly got up; preferring certain affliction to wild and fantastic horrours.