“Because a blatant indecency is nowadays the key-note of a certain section of society,” she said with an eye-flash that literally scorched its unlucky object, “there is no need for you to introduce its pollution into our midst; if you have the misfortune to possess a mind full of unsavoury knowledge, I must at least request you to keep it within the bounds of that mind.”
The young girl stood shivering with bowed head under the blast of this blizzard. She could not help shivering a little, but had still presence of mind enough to shiver even more than she could help, particularly as a restless movement and a sort of sigh coming from the direction of Mrs. Aylmer gave her a faint hope that to one at least of her accusers the punishment that had overtaken her seemed excessive in its severity.
“I was brought up a good deal abroad,” Bonnybell whispered faintly. “I am afraid that I do not yet quite understand English ways.”
“That is nonsense,” replied Camilla, very harshly, but yet not quite with the awful voice-quality of her former Philippic—“sheer nonsense. The standard for the behaviour of young girls in France is a far stricter one than ours.”
“Then I can say nothing!” rejoined the poor child in a voice of despair, folding her slight hands, and really not for the moment noticing how advantageously the ink-stain on the middle finger of the right hand was introduced to notice by this gesture. But Camilla saw the tell-tale spot—tell-tale of obedience and honest effort, and it caused her an odd qualm of pity.
Probably the accusers found the situation too poignantly unpleasant for further endurance, which was also, since their work was done, needless. A murmured proposition to depart from the mother was followed by a murmured consent from the daughter. There was a little natural difficulty about their farewells, and in the moment of hanging back which resulted, and before this problem was solved by Camilla’s shaking hands with them and saying in a hard, conscientious voice, “You were perfectly right. I am glad that you had the courage to tell me. You shall have no cause for further complaint,” Bonnybell realized that before the clock had ticked thirty times she would be left alone with her judge and executioner to hear what awful sentence of hopeless doom?
With an impulse which had less of calculation in it than in any of her actions, words, or gestures, since her first entry, though even here there was a little, she slipped across the intervening space to the one person in whom she had divined some bowels of compassion, i.e. Mrs. Aylmer, and spoke tremblingly, yet not without a forlorn dignity.
“I am very, very sorry for having made such a bad return for your goodness in giving me so kind a welcome; but indeed, indeed I did it in ignorance!”
“I am quite sure you did,” replied the other precipitately, conquering her desire to throw her arms round the criminal and give her several hearty kisses only by a very fast retreat to the door; “and I would have given anything that—that this had not happened!”
Mrs. Aylmer must be a foolish woman, for she cried the whole way back to the Dower House.