“What have I done?” she gasped. “Tell me, Mary, what is it?”
She found a difficulty in speaking. She did not dare approach her cousin.
“I will tell you what you have done,” said Mary, raising her head, and again Camelia felt the hoarse intentness of her voice, like a steady aiming of daggers. “You have taken from me the one thing—the only thing—I had. I love him! He is nothing to you; and you took him from me.”
“Oh, Mary! Took him from you!”
“Yes, yes; you did not know. He did not know. I saw it all. He might have loved me had you not come back. He must have loved me, when I loved him so much! oh, so much!” and, sobbing again, she pressed to her eyes the blood-stained handkerchief, careless now of its revelations.
“Oh, Mary!” cried Camelia, shuddering.
“I was so happy last winter. He would come and read, and ride. He was so kind. Auntie, and he, and I—it was the happiest time of my life. But you came, and he never looked at me again! Oh, how horrible! how unjust! Why should you have everything?—I nothing! nothing! I suppose you thought me contented, since I was ugly, and poor, and stupid. And you, because you are beautiful, and rich, and clever, you have everything! That is all that counts! I am not selfish and cruel; at least, I used not to be. I have thought about other people always! I have tried to do right, and what have I got for it? My life has been a cheat! and I hate it! And I am glad to die, because I see that you, who are bad, get all the love, and that I will never have anything! And I see that I am bad—that I have been made bad through having had nothing!”
“Oh, Mary! forgive me! oh, forgive me!” Camelia found her knees failing beneath her. She stretched her clasped hands towards her cousin.
“I did not know; indeed, I did not! Indeed, I love you, Mary!—oh, I do love you! We all love you!” She felt herself struggling, with weak, desperate hands, against Mary’s awful fate and her own guilt. “How can you say that, when we all love you? know how good you are!—how sweet and good—love you for it!” She buried her face in her hands, sobbing. Mary, who herself no longer sobbed, observed her.
“Oh, you are a little sorry now,” she said, in a voice of cold impassiveness that froze Camelia’s sobs to instant silence. “I make you uncomfortable—a little more uncomfortable than when I cough. It is strange that when I never did you any harm—always tried to please you—you should have found pleasure in hurting me. Do you remember all the little jeers at me before him? You mocked my dulness, my ugliness. He did not laugh. It made him sad, because he did not like to see you unbeautiful in anything; but he must have seen me more stupid, more ugly than before. And when he was with me for one moment you would take him away. And you lied to keep him to yourself, like that day we were to have ridden together; and if you had known that I loved him you would have been all the more anxious to have him—to hurt me.”