Perior came to her; his silence, that could not comfort, answered her. She fell upon her knees beside the bed, and her desperate sobs wailed uselessly against the irretrievable.
CHAPTER XXIX
IT was many weeks afterwards that he told her what Mary had said. Her woe, not selfish, but inconsolable, made it impossible that during the first days of bereavement he should do more than help and sustain her by the fullness of a friendship now recognized as deep and unrestrained.
It was she herself who asked him one day if Mary had said anything that he could tell her, had spoken of her with a continuation of the forgiveness, her trust in which made life possible. Camelia, in her new devotion to her mother, its vehemence almost alarming Lady Paton, controlled for her sake all tears and lamentations, but lying on a sofa this afternoon, alone in the twilight, the tears had risen, and they were falling fast when Perior came in and sat down beside her. It was then that she asked him about Mary.
“She told me what you said to her the night before she died,” Perior answered, and Camelia let him take her hand. She lay reflecting for some moments before saying—
“She wanted you to think as well of me as possible.”
“She wanted to make me happy. She knew that you were mistaken.”
“How mistaken?” Camelia asked from her pillow.
His voice had been unemphatic, but in the slight pause that followed her question she felt that his eyes dwelt upon her, and she looked up at him.
“You told her—that I did not love you.” Camelia lay silent, her hand in his, her eyes on his eyes.