“I am going to tell you something that will make you laugh,” she said in a tone of frank and gently mirthful confidence. “Do you know that when first I knew you, I thought that, of course, you would be like all the rest! I was afraid to be left alone in the room with you!” She ended with a glance at him of expectant enjoyment of his enjoyment of the joke.
Exhilaration was not quite the leading characteristic of his half-strangled answer.
“May I ask how soon you were undeceived?”
CHAPTER XXVII
There was nothing unusual in Camilla’s spending a day of unexplained occupation in London. It therefore excited no surprise when, on a certain Saturday at the end of the first week in February, she departed on one of her silent excursions. It could not have had for object shopping, an occupation for which Mrs. Tancred cherished a dislike as vigorous as were most of her feelings and opinions. If her companions gave a thought to the subject, it was to decide that her errand must be one of the many noiseless good deeds which she hid as if they were crimes. The trumpet blown before actions, so inspiriting a sound in Felicity’s ears, was harshest discord in her sister-in-law’s.
Camilla returned by dinner-time, but did not during or after that repast give any of the slight indications which sometimes escaped her as to the where or the what of the day’s work. She was rather, though not very noticeably, more silent than usual. Not till after luncheon on Sunday did any perceptible change in her habits appear.
To Edward, dreamily puffing in the smoking-room, where Bonnybell, despite all her delicate hints, had never been invited to join him, his wife appeared. It was the hour when she was wont to retire to her religious exercises; and the inexorable rigidity with which, in the face of any and every obstacle, she adhered to the rule caused a look of surprise to dawn on her husband’s face as he took his cigarette out of his mouth, and rose courteously, as he always did, to receive her.
“You are surprised, and I dare say not particularly pleased to see me?” she said, with her usual crude directness.
“Why that fleer?” he asked kindly and playfully.
“Why indeed?” she answered. “It is not the spirit in which I wish to enter upon a subject that has grave bearings on both our lives.”