You will not do me the injustice to think me either impelled or
blinded by external enchantments; you know me to have withstood
their yet fuller blaze in her cousin: O no! were she despoiled of
all personal attraction by the same ravaging distemper that has
been so fierce with her poor sister; were a similar cruel accident
to rob her form of all symmetry, she would yet be more fascinating
to my soul, by one single look, one single word, one sweet beaming
smile, diffusing all the gaiety it displays, than all of beauty,
all of elegance, all of rank, all of wealth, the whole kingdom, in
some wonderful aggregate, could oppose to her.
Her face, her form, however penetrating in loveliness, aid, but do
not constitute, her charms; no, 'tis the quick intelligence of soul
that mounts to her eyes, 'tis the spirit checked by sweetness, the
sweetness animated by spirit, the nature so nobly above all
artifice, all study--O Doctor! restore to me immediately every
vestige, every trait of any promise, any acquiescence, any idea the
most distant, that can be construed into a compliance with one
moment's requisition of delay!
EDGAR MANDLEBERT.
_Cleves Park, Friday Evening._
* * * * *
Camilla, meanwhile, shut up in her room, wept almost without cessation,
from a sense of general unhappiness, though fixed to no point, and from
a disturbance of mind, a confusion of ideas and of feelings, that
rendered her incapable of reflection. She was again followed by Eugenia,
and could no longer refuse, to her tender anxiety, a short detail of the
attack which occasioned her disorder; happy, at least, in reciting it,
that by unfolding the cause, there no longer remained any necessity to
repress the effects of her affliction.
To her great surprise, however, Eugenia only said: 'And is this all, my
dear Camilla?'
'All!' exclaimed Camilla.
'Yes, is it all?--I was afraid some great misfortune had happened.'
'And what could happen more painful, more shocking, more cruel?'
'A thousand things! for this is nothing but a mere mistake; and you
should not make yourself unhappy about it, because you are not to
blame.'
'Is it then nothing to be accused of designs and intentions so
criminal?'
'If the accusation were just, it might indeed make you wretched: but it
is Miss Margland only who has any reason to be afflicted; for it is she
alone who has been in the wrong.'
Struck with this plain but uncontrovertible truth, Camilla wiped her
eyes, and strove to recover some composure; but finding her tears still
force their way, 'It is not,' she cried, with some hesitation, 'it is
not the aspersions of Miss Margland alone that give me so much
vexation--the unkindness of Indiana--'