Mrs. Fox-Darriel crossed her arms and surveyed her friend in an exasperated silence.
“Was that so necessary?” she asked presently, while Camelia, sitting in a low chair half turned from her, unbuttoned her muddy boots and gaiters.
“Yes, it was. I wish you would go away.”
“You know what every one will think—you know what I think!—that you accepted him to prove you could throw him over. You try him on to show that you can fit him, and then kick him away, precisely as you kick away that muddy boot. It is an unheard-of thing. It is distinctly nasty.”
Camelia leaned back with closed eyes, hardly hearing, certainly not caring for the words, though their sound was an importunate jangling at her ears, wearisome, irritating.
“As for the egregious folly of it! well, my dear, you may have plans into which I am not initiated, but the day will come, I think, in which you will own that you have behaved like a horrid little fool.” Mrs. Fox-Darriel moved towards the door, not caring to outstay her climax, yet urged to an addenda by the exasperating, almost slumbering indifference of Camelia’s face. “I will go. You want to finish your cry. Have you been walking about the lanes crying? I am off to the Dormers to-morrow; I only stayed on here because of you; my occupation now is decidedly gone.”
“Good-bye,” said Camelia.
When she was alone she rose and bolted the door. Her ten miles had tired her physically, and she sank back into her chair, her stockinged feet stretched out, her muddy skirts clinging damply about her ankles.
Yes, let the whole truth surge over her, and find her unresisting.
He did not love her; had never loved her. He despised her. The remembrance of his scorn crept over her like a gnawing flame. The shame of last night’s dancing, of his reluctant embrace, that she had courted, came upon her in an awful revelation; and the wilful, desperate passion of to-day, sure of the hidden treasure he withheld from her in punishment only—a child pounding at a locked door. And the room was empty; there had been no treasure. She had forced him to open to her the dreadful vacancy. His sad friendship, smarting still from its momentary debasement, had sheltered her from the keenest pang; it was as if he had held her hand as, together, they went into that vacant room; now, alone, the realization of her own abasement stunned her. But she loved him. It had not been for her love that he had scorned her, though misinterpreting it so cruelly. She had made it impossible that she should ever retrieve herself, or that he should ever see the truth; her falseness had blinded him to her only worth, yet even now the consciousness of that worth held her from utter loss of self-respect, the consciousness of the intrinsic nobility of her devotion, rejected alas! seen with darkest disfigurements, but standing upright and unashamed at the centre of her life. This great love was like an over-soul, a nobler self looking with sad eyes at the prostrate, the utterly confounded Camelia.