Lady Paton was in the hall, a cool, gentle embodiment of the evening. “Mary brought you back?—You are going to dine, Michael?” she asked.
“No; I only want to see Camelia for a moment.”
“I have just come from her. She is with Mr. Rodrigg, talking politics,” and Lady Paton’s smile implied the softest pride in Camelia’s prowess in that pursuit. “She says you have had an old-time afternoon, reading together. You must take up your reading again, Michael—for the time that she is left to us.”
Mary, going slowly up the stairs, bent her head as she heard, “Yes: he had stayed with Camelia all the afternoon.” He did not care to ride with her—no, for all his kindness, the pleasure of the rides was poisoned forever. That was the thought that, at the sight of him, had cut her to the quick, bringing the tears to her eyes. More than Camelia’s lie, Camelia’s cruelty in dealing her that humiliation, burned. When she thought of it the blackness of her own heart terrified her. She felt that she hated Camelia, and when she reached her room, she bolted the door and fell on her bed in an agony of weeping.
Camelia perhaps counted a little too confidently upon Mary’s “adoration” for her. To Mary, Camelia had always seemed the bright personification of beauty, cleverness, joy. She had wondered at her, rather than admired her. Her attitude of mind had been as that of a child staring at the unattainable moon, shining silvery-gold, and sailing far above in a wide clear sky.
She had seldom been conscious in the past of any slight or injury. Her most constant feeling was one of quiet duty. Camelia’s little kindnesses surprised her; her unkindnesses she took as a matter of course. But now, in this dreadful clash of ill-matched interests, her life against Camelia’s game, all the sense of duty, of gratitude, of admiration, went down in black shipwreck. She found that they had been flimsy things, after all, that under their peaceful surface there had been for many weeks a lava-like heaving of resentment. And the worst terror was to see her life bereft of all supports—to see it unblessed, all hatred and despair. For even at the moment she could judge herself, measure how much she had lost in losing her blind humility—that at least gave calm and a certain self-respect—could accuse herself of injustice. Camelia had lied; but then Camelia could never have divined the rash folly of Mary’s secret—must never divine it; and the cruel humiliation of that one blighting intimation of Perior’s charity hurt more than the lie; and Camelia’s ignorance of the hurt she had inflicted only made it ache the more.
CHAPTER XIV
MEANWHILE Perior marched off to the garden. He passed through the morning-room where Mrs. Fox-Darriel was writing.
“So you didn’t get your ride either?” said Mrs. Fox-Darriel, who had her own reasons—and not at all complex ones—for disliking Mr. Perior. “It was rather hot.”
Perior in his indifference did not even divine the suspicion that saw in his arrival, and Camelia’s defection and amusing headache, a portentousness threatening to the object she had set her heart upon.