“How considerate of Camelia!” Perior’s anger made any careful analysis of Camelia’s motives impossible. She had shirked an irksome duty, and kept him to entertain her laziness. The latter fact did not in the least mollify him; it was of a piece with her grasping selfishness, Mary’s pleasure not weighing a feather’s weight against the momentary wish. She had gone to “hurry” Mary, and on her return from the cousinly little errand, had given him the impression of Mary’s uninfluenced change of plan—even implying curates as its cause! Liar! The word almost choked him as he kept it down, for he did not want Mary to know her a liar.
“She went to your room to ask you to go?” he pursued, choosing a safe question.
But his persistence aroused in Mary a certain dim suspicion.
“Yes,” she said; “she was surprised to see me dressed. She did not know I was going with you.” The very force of her inner resentment—a hating resentment, as she felt with terror—made her grasp at an at least outward loyalty. But hardly had she spoken the words when the suspicion, definite, tingling with probability, leaped upon her. She looked quickly at Perior. He was white to the lips. This revelation fairly silenced him. He put his horse to the trot, and the dog-cart, hastening its pace, kept beside him.
Mary could hardly have spoken. Her mind was in a whirl of broken, distracted thoughts, that only grew to coherence when the wave-like conviction of Camelia’s mean robbery broke over her.
Perior’s scorning rage meanwhile hurried forward to wreak itself on Camelia; he was conscious only of its scorching.
They reached the park gates in silence; then Mary was able to say, “Are you coming in?”
“Yes, I will come in for a moment.”
“You—you won’t say anything about—my silliness?”
“My dear Mary, I must speak to Camelia; but you have accused her of nothing, nor shall she think you have. I will come for you to-morrow,” he added as he helped her down from the dog-cart at the door; “we will have our ride. Don’t be persuaded out of it either. Let other people do their own charities. It won’t harm them.”