'Then it is not coming hither,' said a third voice, which they recollected for Mrs. Arlbery's; 'we don't visit: though I should not dislike to see the old baronet. They tell me [he] is a humorist; and I have a taste for all oddities: but then he has a house full of females, and females I never admit in a morning, except when I have secured some men to take the entertaining them off my hands.' 'Whither is Bellamy running?' cried another voice, 'he's off without a word.' 'Gone in hopes of a rencounter, I doubt not,' answered Mrs. Arlbery; 'he made palpable aim at one of the divinities of Cleves at the ball.' Eugenia now grew uneasy. 'Let us be quick,' she whispered 'and enter the house!' 'Divinities! Lord! are they divinities?' said a girlish female voice; 'pray how old are they?' 'I fancy about seventeen.' 'Seventeen! gracious! I thought they'd been quite young; I wonder they a'n't married!' 'I presume, then, you intend to be more expeditious?' said another, whose voice spoke him to be General Kinsale. 'Gracious! I hope so, for I hate an old bride. I'll never marry at all, if I stay till I am eighteen.' 'A story goes about,' said the General, 'that Sir Hugh Tyrold has selected one of his nieces for his sole heiress; but no two people agree which it is; they have asserted it of each.' 'I was mightily taken with one of the girls,' said Mrs. Arlbery; 'there was something so pleasant in her looks and manner, that I even felt inclined to forgive her being younger and prettier than myself; but she turned out also to be more whimsical--and that there was no enduring.' Camilla, extremely ashamed, was now upon the point of begging Eugenia to return, when a new speech seized all her attention. 'Do you know, General, when that beautiful automaton, Miss Lynmere, is to marry young Mandlebert?' 'Immediately, I understand; I am told he has fitted up his house very elegantly for her reception.' A deep sigh escaped Camilla at such publicity in the report and belief of the engagement of Edgar with her cousin, and brought with it a consciousness too strong for any further self-disguise, that her distress flowed not all from an unjust accusation: the sound alone of the union struck as a dagger at her heart, and told her, incontrovertibly, who was its master. Her sensations were now most painful: she grew pale, she became sick, and was obliged, in her turn, to lean upon Eugenia, who, affrighted to see her thus strangely disordered, besought her to go back to the chaise. She consented, and begged to pass a few minutes there alone. Eugenia therefore stayed without, walking slowly upon the bank. Camilla, getting into the carriage, pulled up the blinds, and, no longer self-deceived, lamented in a new burst of sorrow, her unhappy fate, and unpropitious attachment.