She stopt; but she was understood; they both smiled, and Mr. Tyrold immediately bringing in Edgar, said, 'I find my pardon, my dear fellow-culprit, is already accorded; if you have doubts of your own, try your eloquence for yourself.'
He left the room, and Mrs. Tyrold was gently rising to quietly follow, but Camilla, with a look of entreaty of which she knew the sincerity, and would not resist the earnestness, detained her.
'Ah yes, stay, dearest Madam!' cried Edgar, again respectfully taking her hand, 'and through your unalterable goodness, let me hope to procure pardon for a distrust which I here for ever renounce; but which had its origin in my never daring to hope what, at this moment, I have the felicity to believe. Yet now, even now, without your kind mediation, this dear convalescent may plan some probationary trial at which my whole mind, after this long suffering, revolts. Will you be my caution, my dearest Mrs. Tyrold? Will you venture—and will you deign to promise, that if a full and generous forgiveness may be pronounced....'
'Forgiveness?' in a soft voice interrupted Camilla: 'Have I any thing to forgive? I thought all apology—all explanation, rested on my part? and that my imprudencies—my rashness—my so often-erring judgment ... and so apparently, almost even culpable conduct....'
'O, my Camilla! my now own Camilla!' cried Edgar, venturing to change the hand of the Mother for that of the daughter; 'what too, too touching words and concessions are these! Suffer me, then, to hope a kind amnesty may take place of retrospection, a clear, liberal, open forgiveness anticipate explanation and enquiry?'
'Are you sure,' said Camilla, smiling, 'this is your interest, and not mine?... Does he not make a mistake, my dearest Mother, and turn my advocate, instead of his own? And can I fairly take advantage of such an errour.'
The sun-shine of her returning smiles went warm to her Mother's heart, and gave a glow to the cheeks of Edgar, and a brightness to his eyes that irradiated his whole countenance. 'Your penetrating judgment,' said he, to Mrs. Tyrold, 'will take in at once more than any professions, any protestations can urge for me: ... you see the peace, the pardon which those eyes do not seek to withhold ... will you then venture, my more than maternal friend! my Mother, in every meaning which affection and reverence can give to that revered appellation—will you venture at once—now—upon this dear and ever after hallowed minute—to seal the kind consent of my truly paternal guardian, and to give me an example of that trust and confidence which my whole future life shall look upon as its lesson?'
'Yes!' answered Mrs. Tyrold, instantly joining their hands, 'and with every security that the happiness of all our lives—my child's, my husband's, your's, my valued Edgar's, and my own, will all owe their felicity to the blessing with which I now lay my hands upon my two precious children!'
Tears were the only language that could express the fulness of joy which succeeded to so much sorrow; and when Mr. Tyrold returned, and had united his tenderest benediction with that of his beloved wife, Edgar was permitted to remain alone with Camilla; and the close of his long doubts, and her own long perplexities, was a reciprocal confidence that left nothing untold, not an action unrelated, not even a thought unacknowledged.
Edgar confessed that he no sooner had quitted her, than he suspected the justice of his decision; the turn which of late, he had taken, doubtfully to watch her every action, and suspiciously to judge her every motive, though it had impelled him in her presence, ceased to operate in her absence.—He was too noble to betray the well meant, though not well applied warnings of Dr. Marchmont, yet he acknowledged, that when left to cool reflection, a thousand palliations arose for every step he could not positively vindicate: and when, afterwards, from the frank communication of Lionel, he learnt what belonged to the mysterious offer of Sir Sedley Clarendel, that she would superintend the disposal of his fortune, and the deep obligation in which she had been innocently involved, his heart smote him for having judged ere he had investigated that transaction; and in a perturbation unspeakable of quick repentance, and tenderness, he set out for England. But when, at the half-way-house, he stopt as usual to rest his horses in his way to Beech Park,—what were his emotions at the sight of the locket, which the landlady told him had been pledged by a lady in distress! He besought her pardon for the manner in which he had made way to her; but the almost frantic anxiety which seized him to know if or not it was [she], and to save her, if so, from the intended intrusion of the landlord, made him irresistibly prefer it to the plainer mode which he should have adopted with any one else, of sending in his name, and some message. His shock at her view in such a state, he would not now revive; but the impropriety of bidding the landlady quit the chamber, and the impossibility of entering into an explanation in her hearing, alone repressed, at that agitated moment, the avowal of every sensation with which his heart was labouring. 'But when,' he added, 'shall I cease to rejoice that I had listened to the good landlady's history of a sick guest, while all conjecture was so remote from whom it might be! when I am tempted to turn aside from a tale of distress, I will recollect what I owe to having given [ear to one]!' Lost in wonder at what could have brought her to such a situation, and disturbed how to present himself at the rectory, till fixed in his plans, he had ridden to the half-way-house that morning, to enquire concerning the corpse that Mrs. Marl had mentioned—and there—while he was speaking with her, the little maid brought down two letters—one of them directed to himself.—