“I think, Mary,” she said presently, “I could have seen it without one pang for myself; I would have been too glad for you to think of that. And then—he does not love me. The iron entered my soul long ago. I have long since lost even the bitterness of hope.”
“And he does not love you,” Mary repeated quietly, raising her eyes and looking away a little.
“He does not, indeed.”
Camelia’s quivering breaths quieted to a waiting depth. But Mary for a long time said nothing more. Her hand lay across her breast, and above it her face now surely smiled.
At last she turned her eyes on her cousin. Looking at her very gently, she said, “But I love you, Camelia.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
CAMELIA was sitting again by Mary’s bed when Perior was announced the next morning.
“You must go and see him to-day,” said Mary.
“Why—must I?”
“I should like to see him,” Mary’s voice had now a thread only of breath; to speak at all she had to speak very slowly, “and you must tell him first, that I know.”