By the time Sir Arthur and Lady Henge arrived, Camelia had fulfilled her
prophecy and become a popular person. Under the blighting indifference
of her first appearance Clievesbury had naturally retaliated with
severity, but that the first impression had been erroneous the most
severe owned--after Camelia had called on them. Camelia found the
process of winning the whole neighborhood great fun, and its success
gave her a delicious sense of efficiency. She cared nothing, absolutely
nothing, for her neighbors, but once she determined to be cared for by
them she found the facility of the task highly flattering to
self-esteem.
She drove from place to place, sweet, modest, adaptable. She dispensed
pretty compliments with a grace that disarmed the grimmest suspicion.
She showed a pretty interest in every one. Indeed why should they not
like her? Camelia thought she really deserved liking; and though she
laughed at herself a little for the complimentary conclusion, her
kindness struck her as rather nice. It was motiveless, was it not?
almost motiveless, a game that it pleased her to play. Certainly she did
not care to appear before Lady Henge on a background of unpopularity;
the background must harmonize, become her; she would see to that. At
the bottom of her heart Camelia cared very little for Lady Henge's
approval or disapproval; Lady Henge was part of the game; but Camelia
had determined that the game required Lady Henge, like everybody else,
to find her charming; the game required Arthur Henge to propose--then
she might accept him; but she must make quite secure the possibility of
refusing him. So Camelia aimed steadily at one result, and was not at
all sure of her own decision once the result was reached, and this
indecision gave her a happy sense of freedom.
She must capture Sir Arthur; this visit was definite, the last test; but
once captured, Camelia wondered if she would care to keep. Theoretically
she owned to a hard common-sense ambition that would make rejection
doubtful; but when the moment for decision finally arrived, Camelia felt
that this trait in her character might fail her; she did not really
believe in it, though she paraded it, flaunted it. Every one might think
her a hard-headed, hard-hearted little worldling--as far as practice
went they were right, no doubt, in all honesty she must own that she
gave them no occasion to think anything else; but she reserved a warm
corner of unrevealed ideals--ideals she never herself looked at, where a
purring self-content sat cosily.
Lady Henge and her son arrived on a Monday. Lady Henge was nervous,
though her massive personality concealed the tremor, and unhappy--for
she felt Arthur's fate to be a foregone conclusion. She was not a clever
but an immensely conscientious woman. She lived up to all her
principles, and she took only the highest view of everything. Her son's
love for the pretty Miss Paton, who meddled frivolously with politics
(Lady Henge meddled ponderously), and made collections of Japanese
pictures, had thrown her into a dismal perturbation. She could not like
Miss Paton; her cleverness was not disinterested; her sense of duty was
less than dubious, she lived for pleasure, for admiration; she was no
fit wife for a Henge.
The most imperative of the Henges' stately requirements was that solemn
sense of duty which Lady Henge embodied so conclusively.
She felt the tremor quieted, the unhappiness soothed, however, on seeing
Camelia in her home. Indeed, Camelia's background was masterly. By the
end of the first day Lady Henge was owning to herself that the glare of
London had perhaps been responsible for her former unfavorable
impression. Camelia's manner was perfect; she was quiet and gentle; her
wish to please was frank but very dignified. Lady Henge felt that in no
way was her favor being courted, and she was quite clever enough to
appreciate that. Lady Paton was left to take all the initiatives, and
behind her mother Camelia smiled with an air of happy obscurity.
The following days emphasized the initial approval. The image of the
excellent Lady Elizabeth faded by degrees from Lady Henge's mind, and
the ache of disappointment with it. She wonderingly expanded into
confidence under Camelia's gentle influence.
She was a shy woman; she had been afraid of Camelia; but with tender
touches the shyness and the fear seemed to be pressed away. There was
nothing to be afraid of. Was it possible? She doubted sometimes, when
alone and deeply thoughtful; but with Camelia quiet satisfaction was
irresistible.
Perior watched the little comedy, convinced of its artificiality. That
doubt of her final choice which preserved for Camelia her sense of
independent pride free from all tarnish of self-interested scheming, he
could not have believed in. Her motives were, he thought, very clear to
him--as they must be to everybody else. He could not credit her with
love; a girl so dexterously managing her hand was held by no compulsory
force of real feeling. She was going to marry Arthur Henge, because he
was a good match, not because she loved him; any girl might have loved
him certainly, but Camelia was capable of loving no one. He was very
sore, very angry, very moody. Lady Henge's transparent bids to him for
sympathy in irritating his scorn for Camelia irritated him, too, against
her, against Arthur even. Why couldn't they let him alone? They should
get neither yea or nay from him, for, after all, Perior was
inconsistent; the scorn did not shake his rather negative loyalty to his
pupil, and beneath that there lay another and a deeper feeling, the
feeling that made it possible for Camelia to hurt him.
"I was talking to her--to Miss Paton--about Woman's Suffrage to-day," so
Lady Henge would start a conversation, "she seems to have thought rather
deeply on the subject of a widened life for women--the development of
character by responsibility--the democratic ideal, is it not?" Lady
Henge combined staunch conservatism with a devout belief in Humanity.
Perior answered "Yes, I suppose so," to the question.
"She has, I see, a great deal of influence down here in the
country--more than I could have expected in such a gay young creature.
Mrs. Grier spoke to me of her good-heartedness, her generous help in
charitable matters. Mrs. Grier, as you know, is deeply interested in the
improvement of the condition of the laboring classes. I shall count upon
Miss Paton next year; her aid would be very effective; she could help me
with some of my clubs--a pretty face, a witty tongue, popularize one;
she has promised to address the Shirt Makers' Union. She takes so much
interest in all these absorbing social problems,--interest so
unassuming, so free from all self-reference."
They were in the drawing-room after dinner. Perior seemed, in watching
Camelia fulfil herself, to find a searing fascination, for he was often
at Enthorpe Lodge of late. The faint flavor of inquiry in Lady Henge's
assertions only elicitated, "I'm sure she'd be popular." No; he would
not be held responsible for Camelia; and again he determined that Lady
Henge should on the subject of Camelia's full fitness get from him
neither a yea or a nay.
Lady Henge's clear brown eyes had turned contemplatively upon her son
and Camelia, who were sitting on an isolated sofa in a frank
_tête-à-tête_.
Perior's glance followed hers, and while she read in Arthur's absorbed
attitude and expression the wisdom of submissive partisanship--the utter
futility of further resistance, Perior studied the half grave, half
playful smile with which Camelia received her lover's utterances. She
seemed to feel Perior's scrutiny, for her eyes swerved suddenly and met
his, and the smile hardened a little as she looked at him.
"She is very lovely," Lady Henge said with an irrepressible sigh. "It is
a very unusual type of loveliness," at which Perior looked away from
Camelia and back at his companion. "He is very fond of her," Lady Henge
added--a little tearfully, Perior suspected.
"He has taken it seriously for quite a while, I believe."
"Oh yes, yes indeed," Lady Henge, conscious of having herself made the
only barrier to an earlier declaration, spoke a little vaguely.
"Arthur's wife will have many responsibilities," she went on; "I think
that--if she accepts Arthur--Miss Paton will prove equal to them." The
"if she accepts Arthur" Perior thought rather noble, "and her gaiety
will be good for him, he needs such sunshine. I must not be so selfish
as to think that _I_ could give it him. And then--with all her gaiety,"
here a recrudescence of the vein of urgency crept once more into Lady
Henge's voice, "she has depths, Mr. Perior--great depths, has she not?
Neither Arthur nor I take life lightly, you know," and Lady Henge held
him with a waiting pause of silence.
"Yes, I know you don't," he said, and then found himself forced to add,
"there are many possibilities in Camelia."
At all events, he might have said much more. Again he looked across at
Camelia as he spoke, and again her eyes met his. She rose abruptly, and
crossed the room.
"Lady Henge," she said, standing before her guest in an attitude of
delicate request, "won't you play for us? We all want to hear you--and
not as mere interpreter, you know--one of your own compositions,
please."
If there were a vulnerable spot in Lady Henge's indisputable array of
virtues it was a touching egotism in regard to her musical capabilities.
She fancied herself the pioneer of a new school, and hoped for a rather
shallow smattering of form and polyphony to more than atone by an
immense amount of feeling. She smiled now, drawing off her gloves
immediately, even while saying, with the diffidence of a master--
"I am afraid my _poèmes symphoniques_ are not quite on the after-dinner
level, my dear. You know I can't promise a comfortable accompaniment to
conversation."
"Don't degrade us by the implication," smiled Camelia; "we are at least
appreciative."
"My music is emotionally exhaustive," said Lady Henge, shaking her head
and rising massively. "In my humbler way I have tried to do for the
abstract what Wagner did for the concrete. I do not depict the sea, but
the psychological sensations the sea arouses in us." Lady Henge was
moving towards the piano, her very back, with its serene, brocaded
breadth, imposing by its air of large self-confidence a hush upon the
babble of drawing-room flippancy.
"Oh, good gracious!" Gwendolen Holt ejaculated in an alarmed whisper to
her neighbor Mr. Merriman.
"Poor dear Lady Henge," murmured Lady Tramley, leaning back in her
delicate thinness, and fixing sad eyes upon her musical friend.
"Awfully bad, is it?" Mr. Merriman inquired.
"Awfully," said Gwendolen.
"Well, it's all one to me," said Mr. Merriman jocosely.
"I paint the soul of man, as influenced by the forces of nature," still
delivering explanatory comments, Lady Henge had seated herself at the
piano. "My symphonic poem--'Thalassa,' shall I give you that?" and from
a careful adjustment of the piano-stool, she looked up at Camelia, who
had followed her.
Sir Arthur, on his solitary sofa, showed some dismay at the imminence of
his mother's performance. Perior, who had heard Lady Henge play, fixed
enduring eyes on the cornice. Camelia dropped into the vacant seat
beside him.
"Hold your breath, Alceste," she murmured, her smiling eyes still gently
observant of Lady Henge, who, after a majestic turn up and down the
key-board, had paused in a menacing attitude, one hand lifted in a
heavily pouncing position.
"She'll have our heads under water in a minute. Ah! here comes the
splash!" The very walls quivered as that fierce hand fell. A volcanic,
incoherent volume of sound hurtled forth upon the stillness. From
thenceforward they might have been sitting amidst the clamorous
concussions of a thunder-storm, Lady Henge, high priestess of terrified
humanity, making valiant warfare with the angry gods. The wind, or
rather the effect of the wind upon the shrinking mind of man, shrieked
in long sweeps down the key-board--Lady Henge's execution with the flat
of her hand being boldly impressionistic; the waves beat out their
stormy rhythm in crashing chords of very feeble construction, but in
noisiness immensely effective, leaping, bounding, shouldering,
swallowing one another with a splendid inconsequence as to time or key.
A chaos of stammering phrases cried out fitfully above the steady
bellowing of the bass.
Physically the composition was most certainly exhausting. Lady Henge's
fine, flushed profile, bent with brooding intensity above the key-board,
evinced a panting effort to cope with the mighty requirements of her
creation.
"It sounds as if she were being tossed in her cabin, doesn't it?"
Camelia's soft voice murmured under the safe cover of the tumult, her
face keeping the expression of grave attention, "and horribly seasick.
One hears the bottles breaking, and the basins clashing, and the boots
being hurled from side to side. Anything but abstract. Intimately
descriptive rather--don't you think?" A side glint of her eye evidently
twinkled for sympathy; but Perior solemnly stared at the ceiling.
"The construction too," Camelia said more soberly, "she plunged us into
the free fantasia--and perhaps at the end she may fish us out with the
dominant phrase--but I haven't caught it yet; ah, this thudding finale
announces the journey's end." And she jumped up as Lady Henge, with a
fine, tense look of soul-experience, rose from the piano. The dazed and
wilted listeners chimed out the polite chorus usual on such occasions.
Camelia led Lady Henge to her chair. "Thank you--so much," she said.
Lady Henge smiled dimly, her eyes fixed on vacancy.
"It was like a glorious wind blowing about one. It made me think of
Wordsworth's sonnets--of the soul in nature," said Camelia. Perior still
looked stolidly at the ceiling, and she felt his silence to be ominous.
"Such music," she added, "gives one courage for life." She was angry
with Perior. Lady Henge pressed her hand.
"Thanks, my dear. Yes--you _felt_. One must hear, of course, a
composition many times before entering into the sanctuary of the
artist's meaning." Camelia's mouth retained its sympathetic gravity.
Perior said nothing; and faint, relieved little groups of talk twittered
like birds after a storm.
"And you, Mr. Perior," Lady Henge, fanning herself largely turned to
this silent critic. "You, too, are a musician as I know, a musician at
least in appreciation. What do you think of my 'Thalassa'? Frankly
now--as one artist to another." Perior moved his eyes slowly from the
ceiling, and dropped them to Camelia's face. He grew very red.
"Frankly now," Lady Henge reiterated with genial urgency.
"I think it is very bad," said Perior. The sentence fell with a thud,
like a stone.
Lady Henge flushed, and her fan fluttered to stillness; Camelia, her
eyebrows lightly lifted, met Perior's square look.
"Bad," Lady Henge repeated, with a pathetic mingling of deprecating
pride and pain, "really bad, Mr. Perior?"
"Very bad," said Perior.
The unmitigated sentence reduced her to feeble plaintiveness.
"But why? This is really savage, you know."
"Excuse me, I know I seem rude," he looked at her now with something of
an effort. "You see I tell you the uncompromising truth. Your piece is
weak, and crude, and incoherent!"
Now that she met his eyes, Lady Henge saw that it gave him pain to speak
so. Camelia standing over them smiled unruffled.
"It is a case of Berlioz and the Conservatoire, Schumann and the
Philistines, Lady Henge. Mr. Perior is an old classicist--understands
nothing outside strictest adherence to form. Your more modern march of
the _Davidsbündler_ could say nothing to him." Perior did not look at
her.
"If you will allow me, Lady Henge, I will come some day and go over a
lot of Schumann with you. I think you will recognize the difference. His
power and genuineness are apparent. And Schumann has a great deal to
say."
He smiled at her as he spoke, a very sweet smile--asking tolerance for
the friend in spite of the critic's unwilling arrogance. Lady Henge was
soothed, though decidedly shaken.
"You are severe, you know."
"But you prefer severity to silly fibs."
"I may be silly," Camelia here put in with a touch of coldness, "if so,
I stand convicted with you, Lady Henge, for I found your 'Thalassa'
neither crude, nor weak, nor incoherent; but I can't be accused of
fibbing. You will play your symphonic poem to me again, won't you? and
we will leave Mr. Perior to the pleasures of iconoclastic conservatism."
After so speaking, Camelia went back to her seat beside Sir Arthur.
He had a book in his hand, and was turning the leaves vaguely, he put it
down as he looked up at her. For a man well over thirty, Sir Arthur had
certain boyish traits, as a frank nervousness of glance now revealed.
"Well?" Camelia smiled, feeling a something in the silence.
"It was bad, wasn't it?" said Sir Arthur.
"Bad?"
"Yes, poor mother."
"I don't think it bad."
Sir Arthur surveyed her with pained hesitation.
"Why do you say that?" he demanded, with an abruptness of wounded
tenderness that put Camelia alertly on her guard.
"Why do you say _that_?" she asked, rounding innocent eyes at him.
"I saw you laughing at it, with Perior--not that he laughed. I heard
what he said too, I prefer that, you know."
Camelia herself was feeling wounded, was smarting under a sense of angry
humiliation. This added and unexpected blow brought the blood vividly
to her face, and the sincerity of her discomfort seemed even to herself
to warrant the sincerity of her quick question.
"You suspect me of lying?"
Camelia hardly thought that she had lied; neither the flush nor the tone
of voice was acted.
Sir Arthur looked away. "I saw you laughing," he repeated.
"I _was_ laughing," Camelia declared. "Not at Lady Henge," she added.
Sir Arthur kept a silence in which doubt and a longing to believe
evidently struggled.
"I said to Mr. Perior that the rocking passage with the chord
accompaniment made me feel seasick--from its realism; that touch of
levity doesn't imply insincerity in my admiration--I always smile at the
birds in the 'Pastoral.' Why should I be insincere? If I had not liked
it, I would have said so."
Sir Arthur's long breath escaped with the relief of recovered joy.
"Don't be insincere;--dearest," he added, looking at her; and seeing the
surprise with which she received the grave, impulsive word, he went on
quickly, yet gently.
"You know you often want to please people--to make every one like
you;--even I have fancied it--forgive me, won't you, at the price of a
little falseness. When one feels as I do, the least flaw cuts into one
like a knife." With Camelia's triumph there now mingled a bitter
distaste; she could hardly bring herself to look into his honest,
adoring eyes; the quickness of her breath and wavering of her glance
were, again, quite spontaneous, and that she knew them to be effective,
deepened her humiliation.
"To see you laugh at mother--and then praise her--I thought it; and I
can't tell you how it pained me. You forgive me?"
Her self-disgust now seemed to lend her a certain sense of atoning
self-respect. "How good you are!" she said, looking at him very gravely,
and this recognition of his goodness restoring still more fully that
sick self-respect, she was able to smile at him, to think that she must
not exaggerate the little _contretemps_, and to ask herself whether she
might not fall in love with Sir Arthur--simply and naturally. Dear man!
The words were almost on her lips--her eyes at least caressed him with
the implication.
He looked embarrassed, but very happy. "No--no! Please don't say that!
How divinely kind you are. I have been insufferable. It is noble of you
to understand--. Can't we get away from all these people--if only for a
moment. Let us go into the garden--it is very warm." She would rather
not have gone into the garden, but she could not refuse him, she felt
that to some extent she would like to justify his faith in her, and to
shake from her that snake-like imputation of baseness. She glanced at
Perior as she went out; he was talking most affably with Lady Henge, and
did not look at her. His lack of faith stung perhaps more than Sir
Arthur's faith. It was unmerited too, more unmerited than Sir Arthur's
trust, so she told herself, stepping down from the terrace on to the
gravel-path, and the sense of unmerited scorn sharpened that wish to
justify herself--as far as might be--to the kinder judge.
"No, Sir Arthur, you are good," she went on, pausing before him, her
hands clasped behind her after a little-girl fashion habitual with her;
"and I am horrid--it's quite true--but not as horrid as you thought me.
I do like to please people. I am often pettily, impulsively false; it's
quite, quite true. I do like your mother's piece, but probably not as
much as I implied to her by my praise--not as much as greater things:
and Mr. Perior's silence made me angry too; but I probably was a little
insincere, and that every one is the same is no excuse for me. I don't
want to be like every one, and you don't want me to be, do you? But if I
had _not_ liked it, you would not have wished me to express myself with
the bludgeon-like directness of our rugged friend, would you?" Camelia
asked the question with real anxiety, conscious though she was that she
had thought the composition quite as ridiculous as Perior had declared
it. After all, his ugly sincerity justified her kindly fibbing; and as
for the laughing, she was sorry she had laughed, since Sir Arthur had
seen her. His erectness of moral vision would so distort that
unintentional meanness that she could not be asked to confess it; but
her partial confession, all the same, left her confused by the stinging
of small, uncomfortable compunctions. These, however, did not show
themselves in her eyes, nor in the pure lines of her face. Her silvered
garments and exquisite whiteness gave her in the moonlight an angelic
look that might well humble modest manhood before her. Sir Arthur had
never felt himself so near to the girl he loved, nor his love so well
justified.
"No, I don't think it's necessary to give a person the truth like a box
on the ear," he said, and he would have taken her hands, but Camelia
again put them behind her back, and stood smiling at him.
"Poor old Perior," he added, and they walked slowly for a little way
down the path. "You can understand it, though, can't you? He thought you
were fibbing, and that made him give mother the ruthless _coup de
dent_."
This was very true, and so Camelia knew, knowing, too, that she _had_
been fibbing. "But that didn't justify the _coup de dent_," she
declared, "and why should he think I was fibbing?" The bit of audacity
was so inevitable that she hardly felt a qualm over its enunciation. On
Perior's loyalty she relied as she relied on the ground beneath her
feet.
"Well, he knows that you are clever, and that your taste has not been
distorted--as mother's has--by fancied talent." Sir Arthur was all
candid confidence.
"He was _very_ nasty," said Camelia, "and I shall tell him so. And now
that I have made my little confession, and that you have absolved
me--for I am absolved, am I not?--shall we go in?" Camelia drew back
from the proposal she saw looming in the moonlight; there was time,
ample time, for that, now that she was sure of him, quite sure. A warm
little thrill of pleasure went over her at the thought that it was she
who was not ready, was not sure, though she had never liked him more.
"Must we go in?" Sir Arthur looked up at her as she stood on the step
above him. He was very handsome Camelia thought with some complacency.
"I think we must," she said prettily, adding, "I promised to do my skirt
dancing for them, you know. You must tell me it is delightful when I
have done, even if you laugh at me while I am dancing." Sir Arthur had
held out his hand, and she put hers in it.
"You absolve me, don't you?" he said. "You forgive me? You are not
angry?"
"Angry? Have I seemed angry?"
"You had the right to be."
"Not with you," said Camelia, and at that he kissed her hand, and they
went back into the drawing-room.
* * * * *
Camelia as she undressed that night decided that Perior was responsible
for her still smarting irritation. It was too tiresome. Of course,
apparently she had not behaved nicely; but, in neatly analyzing the
whole affair, she could find herself guilty of nothing worse than a
little humorous gaiety--that took an old friend's sympathy for
granted--(could one not think things one did not say? she had only
thought aloud--to him), and a little kindly hypocrisy practised every
day by models of uprightness. Perior's rudeness set a standard by which
social conventions were guilty of black falseness. It was too bad of
him, and her anger put him aside with a sense of relief. The only really
serious part was the stinging sequel. How closely Arthur Henge must have
watched her to catch that irrepressible glint of the eye. He had caught
it, though, and she had lied about it--well, yes--lied, deliberately
lied to a man she respected.
Of course it made her feel uncomfortable--of course it did. "I am not
the vain puppet _he_ thinks me," she said, leaning on her
dressing-table, and looking gravely at her illuminated reflection--the
_he_ being Perior--"the very fact of my worrying over such a trifling
incident proves that I am not. It is _his_ fault that I should feel so."
She paused for a further turn of silent meditation before adding, "My
only fault was in having trusted to his sense of fun, in having been
amused. The rest followed inevitably. I could not have told Arthur Henge
that I found his mother ridiculous, now _could_ I, you foolish
creature?" and irrepressibly Camelia smiled at her lenient accuser in
the glass. At this point of the colloquy a gentle tap at the door
ushered in Mary. Mary, in a dressing-gown of just the wrong shade, was
not an interesting object, and Camelia glanced over her reflection in
the mirror without turning. She continued her own train of thought,
hardly listening to Mary, though vaguely conscious that the awkward
inquiries after her comfort were rather pointless.
"I thought you might want something, Camelia. I thought you looked
rather pale," said Mary, drawing near with some timidity.
"No, thanks. I should have asked Grant, you know," replied Camelia, her
elbows still on the dressing-table. She absently watched Mary lift her
discarded gown from the floor, fold it, and lay it neatly over the back
of a chair. "Don't mind about picking up those things, Mary," she
added, yawning a little, and wishing rather that Mary would go. "Grant
can do all that."
"I like to tidy up after you." Mary's smile was slightly forced. "See,
Camelia, you need me to look after you--your pearl necklace under a
chair."
"It must have caught in my bodice," said Camelia, glancing at the
necklace as Mary laid it on the dressing-table. "That certainly was
stupid of me. Thanks, dear." Mary still lingered.
"You don't want anything, you are sure? You feel quite well--and--happy,
Camelia?" The question was so odd that Camelia turned her head and
looked up, surprised, at Mary's rather embarrassed countenance.
"Happy?" she repeated.
"Yes; I fancied you might have something to tell me." This initiative
was certainly amazing in the reserved Mary, and Camelia stared.
"Something to tell you?" Then her deliberate departure for the moonlit
_tête-à-tête_ with Sir Arthur coming luminously to her mind, she began
to laugh. "Why, Mary, did you come in a congratulatory mood?"
Mary's badly mastered nervousness melted somewhat. "Oh, Camelia--_may_
I?" her face lighted to an almost charming eagerness--a charm that our
æsthetic heroine was quick to recognize. "_May_ I?"
"May you? No, you little goose," Camelia said good-humoredly. "Upon my
word, Mary, you should have had your portrait painted at that moment;
you never looked so--significant. Are you so anxious to get rid of me
then?" The charming look had crumbled into inextricable confusion.
"Oh, Camelia, how can you?--how could you think----?"
"Now, Mary, imaginative efforts are bad for you; don't indulge them."
"I hoped--I only wanted----"
"Yes, of course, you want me to be happy; and very nice it is of you
too. Be patient, Mary; you shall congratulate me some day. I haven't
decided _when_ that shall be. I haven't really quite decided _how_ I
shall be happy--there are so many ways--the choice of a superlative is
perplexing. When I choose you need not come to me, I promise you."
Camelia rose, stretching her arms above her head, and smiling very
kindly at her cousin.
Her own words made her feel comfortable. Still smiling, she put her arm
around Mary's neck and kissed her. "I shall tell you _immediately_. Now
run to bed, dear, for _you_ look pale." When Mary was gone, Camelia
finished undressing, and got into bed in a frame of mind much reassured
as to her own intrinsic merit.