“My dearest child, tell me—what is it? You are breaking your heart and mine. Do you love him? Tell me, darling. Is it some hidden scruple? some fancy? Let me send for him,” poor Lady Paton’s thoughts dwelt longingly on amorous remedies.
“Love him? Sir Arthur? Are you mad, mother?” Camelia lifted a stern face. “He doesn’t enter my mind. He is nothing to me—simply nothing.”
“But, Camelia—you are miserable——”
“Ah! I have a right to that dreary liberty.”
“And—Oh don’t be angry, dearest—is there no one else?”
“No one else?” Camelia repeated it angrily indeed;—that her mother should give this stupid wrench to her heart was intolerable. “Of course there is no one else! How can you be so tiresome, mother. There—don’t cry. I am simply sick of everything—myself included, that is all that is the matter with me. Please don’t cry!” for sympathetic tears were coming into her own eyes, and above all things, she dreaded a breaking down of reserves, a weakened dignity that might bring her to a sobbing, maudlin confession, that would burn her afterwards, and follow her everywhere in the larger pity of her mother’s eyes.
Lady Paton, her handkerchief at her lips, pressed back her grief, saying in a broken entreaty, “But, Camelia—why? How long will it last? You were always such a happy creature.”
“How can I tell?” Camelia gave a little laugh that carried her over the vanquished sob to a certain calmness; leaning back against the mantelpiece she added, smiling drearily, “Don’t worry, mother; don’t you be miserable.”
Lady Paton looked at her with eyes in which Camelia felt the unconscious dignity of an inarticulate reproof.
“Oh, my child!” she said, “my child! Am I not your mother? Is not your happiness my only happiness?—your sorrow my last and greatest sorrow? You forget me, dear, in your own grief. You shut me out—because you don’t love me—as I love you;—it is that that hurts the most.”