'Repress, repress,' said Mrs. Tyrold, gently, yet firmly, 'these strong feelings, uselessly torturing to us both. Raise your head, my poor girl ... raise ... and repose it upon the breast of your Mother.'
'Of my Mother?' repeated Camilla, in a voice hardly audible; 'have I a Mother—who again will own the blast of her hopes and happiness?—the disgrace, the shame of the best and most injured of Fathers!'
'Let us pray,' said Mrs. Tyrold, with a sigh, 'that these evils may pass away, and by salutary exertions, not desponding repinings, earn back our fugitive peace.'
Again she then would have raised her; but Camilla sunk from all assistance: 'No,' she cried, 'I am unworthy your lenity—I am unable even to bear it, ...'
'Camilla,' said Mrs. Tyrold, steadily, 'it is time to conquer this impetuous sensibility, which already, in its effects, has nearly broken all our hearts. With what horrour have we missed—with what agony sought you! Now then, that at length, we find you, excite not new terrour, by consigning yourself to willing despair.'
Struck with extreme dread of committing yet further wrong, she lifted up her head, with intention to have risen; but the weak state of her body, forgotten by herself, and by Mrs. Tyrold unsuspected, took its turn for demanding attention.
'Alas! my poor Child,' cried she, 'what horrible havock has this short absence produced! O Camilla!... with a soul of feeling like yours,—strong, tender, generous, and but too much alive, how is it you can thus have forgotten the first ties of your duty, and your heart, and have been wrought upon by your own sorrows to forget the sorrows you inflict? Why have you thus fled us? thus abandoned yourself to destruction? Was our anger to be set in competition with our misery? Was the fear of displeasure, from parents who so tenderly love you, to be indulged at the risk of never ending regret to the most lenient of Fathers? and nearly the loss of senses to a Mother who, from your birth, has idolized you in her inmost soul?'
Bending then over her, she folded her in her arms; where Camilla, overpowered with the struggles of joy and contrition, sunk nearly lifeless.
Mrs. Tyrold, seeing now her bodily feebleness, put her to bed, with words of soothing tenderness, no longer blended with retrospective investigation; conjuring her to be calm, to remember whose peace and happiness were encircled in her life and health, and to remit to her fuller strength all further interesting discourse.
'Ah, my Mother!' cried Camilla, 'tell me first—if the time may ever come when with truth you can forgive me?'