While this was passing, Indiana, fluttering with all the secret triumph
of conscious beauty, attended by Edgar, and guarded by Miss Margland,
walked up the room, through a crowd of admiring spectators; in whom a
new figure, without half her loveliness, would have excited the same
curiosity, that her extreme inexperience attributed solely to her
peculiar charms. Camilla and Eugenia followed rather as if in her train,
than of her party; but Lionel kept entirely with the officers, insisting
upon their guessing which was the heiress; to whom, while he purposely
misled their conjectures, he urged them to make their court, by
enumerating the present possessions of Sir Hugh, and her future
expectations.
Camilla, however, passed not long unnoticed, though the splendor of
Indiana's appearance cast her at first on the back ground; a
circumstance which, by impressing her with a sensation of inferiority,
divested her mind of all personal considerations, and gave to her air
and countenance a graceful simplicity, a disengaged openness, and a
guileless freedom from affectation, that rendered her, to the observant
eye, as captivating upon examination, as Indiana, from the first glance,
was brilliant and alluring. And thus, as they patrolled the room,
Indiana excited an unmixt admiration, Camilla awakened an endless
variety of remark; while each being seen for the first time, and every
one else of the company for at least the second, all attention was their
own, whether for criticism or for praise. To Indiana this answered, in
fulfilling her expectations; by Camilla, it was unheeded, for, not
awaiting, she did not perceive it; yet both felt equal satisfaction. The
eyes of Camilla sparkled with delight as she surveyed all around her the
gay novelty of the scene; the heart of Indiana beat with a pleasure
wholly new, as she discovered that all surrounding her regarded her as
the principal object.
Eugenia, meanwhile, had not even the negative felicity to pass
unobserved; impertinent witticisms upon her face, person, and walk,
though not uttered so audibly as to be distinctly heard, ran round the
room in a confused murmur, and produced a disposition for sneering in
the satirical, and for tittering in the giddy, that made her as valuable
an acquisition to the company at large, who collect for any amusement,
indifferent to its nature, as her fair cousin proved to the admirers of
beauty, and her sister to the developers of expression. She was
shielded, however, herself, from all undeserved mortifications, by not
suspecting any were meant for her, and by a mind delightedly
pre-occupied with that sudden expansion of ideas, with which new scenery
and new objects charm a youthful imagination.
When they had taken two or three turns up and down the room, the
saunterers were called upon to give place to the dancers. Edgar then led
out Indiana, and the master of the ceremonies brought Major Cerwood to
Camilla.