“Must we go in?” Sir Arthur looked up at her as she stood on the step above him. He was very handsome Camelia thought with some complacency.
“I think we must,” she said prettily, adding, “I promised to do my skirt dancing for them, you know. You must tell me it is delightful when I have done, even if you laugh at me while I am dancing.” Sir Arthur had held out his hand, and she put hers in it.
“You absolve me, don’t you?” he said. “You forgive me? You are not angry?”
“Angry? Have I seemed angry?”
“You had the right to be.”
“Not with you,” said Camelia, and at that he kissed her hand, and they went back into the drawing-room.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Camelia as she undressed that night decided that Perior was responsible for her still smarting irritation. It was too tiresome. Of course, apparently she had not behaved nicely; but, in neatly analyzing the whole affair, she could find herself guilty of nothing worse than a little humorous gaiety—that took an old friend’s sympathy for granted—(could one not think things one did not say? she had only thought aloud—to him), and a little kindly hypocrisy practised every day by models of uprightness. Perior’s rudeness set a standard by which social conventions were guilty of black falseness. It was too bad of him, and her anger put him aside with a sense of relief. The only really serious part was the stinging sequel. How closely Arthur Henge must have watched her to catch that irrepressible glint of the eye. He had caught it, though, and she had lied about it—well, yes—lied, deliberately lied to a man she respected.
Of course it made her feel uncomfortable—of course it did. “I am not the vain puppet he thinks me,” she said, leaning on her dressing-table, and looking gravely at her illuminated reflection—the he being Perior—“the very fact of my worrying over such a trifling incident proves that I am not. It is his fault that I should feel so.” She paused for a further turn of silent meditation before adding, “My only fault was in having trusted to his sense of fun, in having been amused. The rest followed inevitably. I could not have told Arthur Henge that I found his mother ridiculous, now could I, you foolish creature?” and irrepressibly Camelia smiled at her lenient accuser in the glass. At this point of the colloquy a gentle tap at the door ushered in Mary. Mary, in a dressing-gown of just the wrong shade, was not an interesting object, and Camelia glanced over her reflection in the mirror without turning. She continued her own train of thought, hardly listening to Mary, though vaguely conscious that the awkward inquiries after her comfort were rather pointless.
“I thought you might want something, Camelia. I thought you looked rather pale,” said Mary, drawing near with some timidity.