Camelia had sat down to the tea-tray brought to refresh her after her journey. She looked up from the filling of her cup to meet in a glance the delicate directness of Lady Tramley’s look.
“Jack knows the ropes, of course, and I thought you ought to know too—and be sorry.” In her heart Lady Tramley hoped for an expansion of sorrow that would carry Camelia past her moment of inexplicable folly.
“I am sorry. The bill, you mean.” Camelia folded a slice of bread and butter, adding “Idiots.”
“Idiots indeed. It won’t be carried, I am afraid. There is a split in the Government, and Mr. Rodrigg has developed a really spiteful acrimony. I always hated that man.”
“Ah! I loathe him!” said Camelia. She thought with a pang of self-reproach of an unopened letter among the rejected pile—a letter for Mr. Rodrigg. She had not cared to read his shuffling excuses. His vanity, bulwarked by the strangely apt events succeeding his discomfiture, might well renew hope. He might imagine these events the result of remorse, and that, brought to a timely realization of her folly, his fair one would consent to bury the hatchet and allow his firm hand to tame her finally. All this Camelia had conjectured very rightly on looking at the fat envelope. She had restrained the direct rebuff of returning the unopened letter, but she had neither answered nor cared to read it, and could well imagine that Mr. Rodrigg’s cumulative humiliation would urge him to his only possible vengeance. The “I loathe him” was spoken with a most feeling intensity of tone.
“Yes.” Lady Tramley’s affirmative was meaning, and Camelia looked up alertly. “Lady Henge told me.”
“You know everything, I believe,” cried Camelia. “Well, I am in good hands.”
“I understand—your idea in it. But how unwise. How you mistook the man.”
“Rather! Ass that I am!”
“You looked for superlative chivalry, if you come to think of it.”