“You tossed me to him—and he refused me! How dare you! How dare you! How dare you!” And Mary, a revelation of rage and detestation flaming up in her eyes, distorting her face, struck her cousin violently on the cheek.
Camelia stood dazed. The blow interpreted, too well, Mary’s attitude. She could not resent, nor even wonder, could only accept the retribution of cruel misunderstanding and bow her head. She covered her face with her hands and wept. Except for this sound of weeping the room was still. In the darkness of her humiliation—shut in behind her hands—Camelia felt, at last, the silence. She looked up. Mary was once more leaning against the door. Her eyes were closed. Camelia went to her, took her hand, and Mary made no motion. Raising the hand to her lips Camelia kissed it; its coldness chilled the smarting of the blow. Mastering her terror Camelia put her arms around her, and, Mary sinking forward into them, she gathered up the piteously light figure and carried it to the bed.
“Mary—Mary—Mary,” she murmured, staring at the head which lay so still, so solemnly. Was she dead? Camelia struck aside the thought of a so cruel finality. Strengthened by her rebellion she sprang to open the door, and the house resounded with her cries for help.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE servant, as he showed Perior into the drawing-room, told him that Miss Fairleigh was dying, and the imminence of the tragedy was sorrowfully emphasized by Lady Paton’s woe-stricken face, as she came in to him.
“Yes, Michael, dying,” she said before he spoke; his look had asked the question. He took her hands, and they sat down, finding a comfort in being together, and Perior was in as much need of it as she, felt not one whit stronger before the approaching end.
“Tell me about it. It has been so sudden.”
Lady Paton sobbed out the sad facts. Her own blindness; poor Mary’s long concealment—too successful; the doctor’s fatal verdict.
“I was blind, too,” said Perior, “though I always feared it.”
“Ah! that is the cruellest part of it! And her indifference—she does not seem to care; she does not speak to any of us.”