He had been anxious, he had been hurt; but he had never imagined that Camelia thought him hopeless. Her complacent conviction of intellectual conquest was far indeed from his suppositions; the results of her Italian reading had been adroitly thrown into his speech as a piece of pretty flattery, that a great man might harmlessly permit himself towards a wilful, easily flattered woman. So the two stupidities met quite unconscious one of the other.
Mr. Rodrigg was to stop for a fortnight at least, and as Sir Arthur had to absent himself at intervals during the period, Camelia was all the more content. She feared that Sir Arthur’s attitude of independence and non-expectancy might antagonize Mr. Rodrigg. She relied upon her own arguments, her own flattering influence. She sat up late at night cramming the pamphlets, reports, and books with which Sir Arthur supplied her. The resultant pallor at breakfast deepened the effect of an intellectual atmosphere in which she wrapped herself serenely. Mr. Rodrigg smiled, paternally almost, and with his most tolerant calm, upon these efforts. He cut her a large slice of cold beef at the side-board and advised her to take a glass of port; “You mustn’t tire yourself, you know, my dear young lady.”
He rather resented Henge’s evident influence when he saw how deeply Camelia was determined on the bill, but not really troubled by it. Camelia’s fervor of sympathy seemed really personal; girlish emotionalism, a futile but pretty pity quite interpreted her tenacity. He was rather pleased that she should be on the side of the factory women, though anxious to explain to her that the logic of his own position need not exclude that partiality.
He thought it safer, however, to argue as little as possible, and listened attentively and pleasantly, quite willing to go this far in humoring. Meanwhile Camelia’s delay in announcing an engagement imposed a general silence; no one spoke of Sir Arthur as an accepted lover, and Mr. Rodrigg might perhaps be pardoned if no such instinctive intimation penetrated his thick self-confidence. Sir Arthur coming down for a Saturday and Sunday in Mr. Rodrigg’s visit, and going off again on a Monday, rather avoided an encounter.
Mr. Rodrigg himself good-humoredly introduced the subject of the bill one evening in the smoking-room, and they talked of it amicably and impersonally for a little while. But after this talk Sir Arthur said to Camelia—
“I see very plainly where he stands. He will be firmly against me; his reticence doesn’t conceal that.”
“Are you sure?” asked Camelia. She herself was not at all sure. In a walk with Mr. Rodrigg that morning she had certainly observed promising leaf-blades break the stiff soil of his non-committal attitude. Camelia did not imagine that her own beaming smile might well allure those vernal symptoms.
“Quite sure,” said Sir Arthur, who was really getting rather tired of Mr. Rodrigg and his utility, “and—now that I won’t see you again until next Thursday—won’t you talk of something as far removed from the bill as possible.”
“That would be a very uninteresting something,” said Camelia. “No, I can think of nothing but politics just now. Whose fault is that, pray? Did you see the report Mr. Dobson sent me this morning? You don’t want to see it! Fie, you lukewarm reformer. Now pray be patient—we will talk of something else on Thursday, perhaps.” So she warded him off, conscious always of that trembling retreat when the momentous question approached her. She was almost glad when Sir Arthur was gone again. At all events, she would make a good fight for his cause whether or no she accepted him.
“And you are on our side too, are you not?” she said to Perior, for Perior, more silent than ever, and revolving inner cogitations on his own laxity, still made an almost daily visit.