“Ah—indeed he is.”
“And he himself is wise and excellent,” Camelia added; “I like him very much.”
“He is coming alone?”
“No, Lady Henge comes too.”
Mrs. Fox-Darriel gave her friend a sharp glance.
“That’s very serious, you know, Camelia. I think you must have decided—to suit Lady Henge.”
Camelia smiled good-humoredly. “I will suit her—and then see if he suits me.”
Mrs. Fox-Darriel lay reflecting on the sofa. Camelia accepted frankness to a certain point, beyond that point she repulsed it. It was rather sly of her, Mrs. Fox-Darriel thought, to keep up these needless pretences. Camelia must be anxious for the match—anxious to a certain degree, and her careful preservation of the false dignity of her position was really rather mean. As for Mrs. Fox-Darriel, she desired the match with a really disinterested fervor. She felt a certain personal pride in Camelia’s success; she had resigned supremacy, and only asked Camelia to uphold her own. Camelia as Lady Henge would, from a very charming person, have become a very important personage, a truly momentous friend. Her fondness for the child would ensure the child’s loyalty. A near friend of the Prime Minister’s wife—who knew? The thought flitted pleasantly through Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s mind, and the thought, too, of all that Camelia, in an even less exalted position, could do for the impecunious Hon. Charlie, Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s husband. There was really no possibility of a doubt in Camelia’s mind. Mrs. Fox-Darriel simply did not believe her, and regretted her lack of candor; but at the same time she felt a little anxiety. There were certain phases in Camelia that had always baffled her investigations, an unexpectedness that Mrs. Fox-Darriel had encountered more than once.
“It is really the very best thing you could do,” she observed now, “and I wouldn’t play with him if I were you. I know that he is the image of fidelity, and yet the Duchess of Amshire is very anxious for him to marry her girl, that ugly Lady Elizabeth, and Lady Henge favors that match, and he really is under his mother’s thumb.”
“Decidedly I must waste no time,” said Camelia, laughing, “and decidedly it would be the best thing I could do, since the Marquis was snapped up by the American girl—swarming with millions. I think I should have been a Marchioness, Frances, had not that strange look, between a squint and a goggle, in his eyes made me hesitate.”