Camelia's horror kept silence, though the room seemed to whirl round with her. Had Mary by some unknown means reached the Grange before she did? Had she been hidden near the laboratory? Had she heard? Were all merciful lies impossible? She felt her very lips freeze in a rigid powerlessness.

"You went to tell him that I loved him?" Mary's eyes opened widely as she spoke, and she walked up to her cousin, close to her.

"You told him that I loved him," she repeated, and Camelia in her nightmare horror felt the hatred of the pale eyes.

"You don't dare deny that you told him." No, Camelia did not dare deny.

She looked down spellbound at Mary. She was afraid of her, horribly afraid of her. It was like the approach of a nightmare animal, its familiar seeming making its strangeness the more awful. She did not dare deny. She could not move away from her; she was paralyzed in her dread.

Mary looked at her as though conscious of her own power.

"You told him, so that he might comfort you, tell you he had never loved me, never could have loved me. You betrayed me to save yourself from that reproach of robbing me." It was like awakening with a gasp that Camelia now cried--

"No, no, Mary! Oh no."

She could speak. She could clasp her hands. "No, no, no," she repeated almost with joy.

"You lie. You are lying. What is the good of lying to me now? It is easy for you to lie. You went to ask him the truth, and he gave it to you.

For he would never have loved me, whatever I may have hoped--even believed at moments."

"No, Mary; no, no!" Mary's dreadful supposition made Camelia feel the reality as a peace, a refuge. That world of black cruelty where Mary wandered, that at least was untrue, an illusion. Not hatred, not deceit surrounded her, but love, and pity, and tenderness.

"I did not go for that, Mary," she cried. "Listen, Mary, you are wrong; thank G.o.d, you are wrong. I did not go because I was sorry for myself; I did not go basely. I was so sorry for you," said Camelia, sobbing and speaking brokenly, while Mary looked at her in a stern tearless silence, "I knew he would be sorry. I knew we both loved you, and I wanted him to marry you, Mary."

"_What!_" Mary's voice was terrible; yet Camelia clung to the courage of her love, confident that the truth alone could now reveal it--all the truth.

"Yes, dearest Mary, yes. There was no hatred, only a longing to make you happy--to help atone; only love, not hatred."

"You are telling me the truth?"

They were standing still before each other. Camelia could not interpret the pale eyes.

"Mary, I swear it before G.o.d."

"And he will not marry me!"

"He loves you, as I do."

"He will not marry me!"

"Let me only tell you--everything; it is not you only----"

"You tossed me to him--and he refused me! How dare you! How dare you!

How dare you!" And Mary, a revelation of rage and detestation flaming up in her eyes, distorting her face, struck her cousin violently on the cheek.

Camelia stood dazed. The blow interpreted, too well, Mary's att.i.tude.

She could not resent, nor even wonder, could only accept the retribution of cruel misunderstanding and bow her head. She covered her face with her hands and wept. Except for this sound of weeping the room was still.

In the darkness of her humiliation--shut in behind her hands--Camelia felt, at last, the silence. She looked up. Mary was once more leaning against the door. Her eyes were closed. Camelia went to her, took her hand, and Mary made no motion. Raising the hand to her lips Camelia kissed it; its coldness chilled the smarting of the blow. Mastering her terror Camelia put her arms around her, and, Mary sinking forward into them, she gathered up the piteously light figure and carried it to the bed.

"Mary--Mary--Mary," she murmured, staring at the head which lay so still, so solemnly. Was she dead? Camelia struck aside the thought of a so cruel finality. Strengthened by her rebellion she sprang to open the door, and the house resounded with her cries for help.

CHAPTER XXVII

The servant, as he showed Perior into the drawing-room, told him that Miss Fairleigh was dying, and the imminence of the tragedy was sorrowfully emphasized by Lady Paton's woe-stricken face, as she came in to him.

"Yes, Michael, dying," she said before he spoke; his look had asked the question. He took her hands, and they sat down, finding a comfort in being together, and Perior was in as much need of it as she, felt not one whit stronger before the approaching end.

"Tell me about it. It has been so sudden."

Lady Paton sobbed out the sad facts. Her own blindness; poor Mary's long concealment--too successful; the doctor's fatal verdict.

"I was blind, too," said Perior, "though I always feared it."

"Ah! that is the cruellest part of it! And her indifference--she does not seem to care; she does not speak to any of us."

"Not to Camelia? Is Camelia with her?"

Perior's heart must spare some of its aching to his unhappy Camelia.

"She has not once left her. She is so brave; I can only cry; but it has made Camelia already different; a strength, a gentleness, yet a despair.

She feels it terribly, Michael, and the first shock was hers. Mary was out all yesterday afternoon--in the wet and cold, and when she came in she fainted in Camelia's room."

Perior looked at her, pondering this sinister announcement.

"I should like to see Mary--when she is able," he said.

"Yes. She must have her friends about her, my poor, poor child. Ah Michael! I can never forgive myself."

"Why do you say that? You gave Mary all her sunshine."

"Not enough! not enough! She must have seen that it was Camelia, only Camelia, in whom my heart was bound up. She must have felt it."

Perior sighed heavily. He, too, had regrets. Had he but known, guessed what he had been to Mary! But he said, "Don't exaggerate that; Mary must have understood; it was inevitable, quite, and pardonable. Camelia was your daughter."

"Ah! Camelia had so much, Mary so little!" and to this Perior must perforce a.s.sent.

Meanwhile Camelia sat by Mary's side. She divided the vigils with the nurse who came down from London. She found that her eternal self-reproach had strengthened her. She could bear its steady contemplation and soothe her mother's more helpless grief.

Mary was sinking fast. During the next three days she hardly spoke, though her eyes followed the ministering figures that moved about her bed. Conscious that she was dying, but wrapped in an emotionless sadness, she watched them all indifferently, and slept quietly from time to time. It was going to be much easier than she had thought. Hardly a thread bound her to life; even her pa.s.sionate hatred of Camelia was dimmed by the creeping mists; even her love for Perior wailed, it seemed, at a long distance from her; she listened to it as she lay there; only at moments came a throb of pain for all the happiness she had never had. Camelia meeting the calm eyes would smile tremulously, but Mary gave no answering smile, and her eyes kept all their calm.

Camelia had to hold firmly to the self-abnegation of perfect self-control to keep down the cry of confession that would give her relief, that would perhaps admit her to Mary's heart; it was not until the third night, as she sat beside her, that the yearning allowed itself to grow to hope. Mary's eyes, on this night, turned more than once from their vacant gaze and dwelt upon her with a fixity almost insistent.

Camelia dared, at last, to take in both her own the tragic hand that lay on Mary's chest, and, after a timid pause, she raised it to her lips. It lay resistless; she held it against her cheek; through the dimness, Mary felt the tears wetting it.

The merciful hardness about her heart seemed to melt. She knew a keener pang, a longer aching, that did not end and give her peace again. It was not calm, after all, not good to die with that unloving frost holding one. She lay in silence, looking, in the faint light, at her cousin's bent head, the ruffled outline of the golden hair. The thought of Camelia's beauty bowed in this desolation touched her sharply, intolerably. She felt her heart beating heavily, and suddenly, "Camelia, I am sorry," she said.

Camelia clasped the imprisoned hand to her breast, and leaned forward.