The revolt in Camilla’s Puritan soul against the orgy of ungoverned passion which had chosen her house for its scene was incongruously mixed with an angry compassion, which suspected itself of being something even more lenient towards the cause of the whole uproar, while a very sincere annoyance at the unavoidable and imminent split between herself and her nearest and most congenial neighbours threw in its pinch of bitterness to the distasteful brew.
Edward’s feelings on the subject were even more complicated and less agreeable. Vexation at his own folly in allowing himself to be persuaded to forego his day’s work on the chance of a needless intervention in what no wise concerned him, a compassion even keener than his wife’s, but in his case dedicated chiefly to Toby, coupled with a dim but still existing satisfaction in his discomfiture, and that again with a biting self-disgust for being capable of such a sensation,—these ingredients composed no pleasant potion.
“It is to be hoped that, at all events, this will end the affair,” Camilla said, when at length they were alone, with a sigh of stretched endurance.
“I suppose that the length of the interview looks like it,” he answered.
“Does it?” she rejoined, her nervous irritation wreaking itself, as it had so often done before in their married life, in causelessly stinging words upon him. “I dare say you know more about these kind of extravagant love scenes than I do. You certainly cannot know less.”
He smiled a little sadly. “Mine was a very simple deduction; if she had relented, Toby would not have foregone his luncheon.”
“That is true,” she said, mollified by his gentleness, a gentleness that yet never prevented the recurrence of her stings, “and I was unnecessarily snappish, as you must often find me. Poor little wretch! She has shown more principle and grit than I gave her credit for, if she has kept to her renunciation of him.”
Edward was silent. The having lived in the house with Bonnybell for several weeks had possibly made him more attached to rigid truth than ever before; and the motive of her heroic abandonment was still too obscure to him for him to be able to join as cordially as he would have liked in encomiums of it.
“It is, of course, a severe trial to have her returned upon our hands, when we had thought our responsibility nearly ended; but we must try not to let her see it—a needless caution to you, whose tendency is always towards over-indulgence—but in this case I should be in agreement with you; in a mind like hers, the first germs of good cannot be too carefully fostered.”
Edward’s acquiescence in this plan of campaign, though really a fervent one, was indicated only by a slight nod, and Mrs. Tancred went on, the leniency and forbearance of her first proposal sliding into a withering sarcasm.