The Confounding of Camelia

But he did love her. That was the worst of it, as he told himself through the night that followed. His love and his disgrace pursued him. Disgraced, though cruel enough to clear...

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 Clievesbu...

Mary came for Camelia one morning while Perior was with her, to tell her that Jane Hicks was dying and asking for her. Mary saw that Camelia's promptitude, where compunction blu...

Sir Arthur was back again on Thursday, alertly conscious of a half promise, and he intended to put it to the test while he and Camelia rode together in the afternoon. The party...

Michael Perior was an unfortunate man; unfortunate in his temperament, which was enthusiastic, sensitive, and idealistic; unfortunate in the circumstances with which that temper...

A week had passed since Perior had received the first pleading note from Enthorpe, and one afternoon, when he was busy in his laboratory, another arrived, more a command than a...

Lady Paton was a thin, graceful woman, her slenderness emphasized, like her daughter's, by a very small head. Since her husband's death she had worn black, and even now it seeme...

But Mary was quite mistaken--as absolute logic is apt to be when dealing with human beings. Camelia, indeed, had gone to Perior, but on a very different errand from the one Mary...

Camelia read all day in the library, where only Siegfried was made welcome, or rode for hours about the wintry country. To all timid questions, as to future plans, she only answ...

She did not see Mary again until the next morning, and then Camelia gave herself the satisfaction of fulfilling an uncompulsory duty. Mary's mask-like look of endurance met her...

Mr. Perior was a tall man, well built, yet carrying himself with a certain ungainliness. He had an air of eagerness reined back. His face was at once severe and sensitive.

The little moonlit episode had very thoroughly mended the rift within the lute. Camelia's seeming frankness of confessional confidence more than atoned for every doubting qualm....

Perior in his indifference did not even divine the suspicion that saw in his arrival, and Camelia's defection and amusing headache, a portentousness threatening to the object sh...

When Camelia came down into the country after her second London season, descended lightly upon the home of her forefathers, her coming unannounced, and as much a matter of capri...

Whether Camelia were decided on accepting Sir Arthur or not, every one else, under a waiting silence, considered the engagement an accomplished fact. Poor Mr. Merriman departed...

Camelia was summoned to find Mrs. Fox-Darriel in the drawing-room. Mrs. Fox-Darriel, with a pastoral hat--rather Gallic in its conscious innocence--tipped over her emphasized ey...

Mrs. Fox-Darriel laughed slightly; she put down the book with which she was solacing a lazy afternoon on the sofa, and, looking at Camelia's cloth dress and sailor hat, asked he...

Mrs. JEDSLEY'S visit of curiosity and condolence was of a surprisingly consolatory nature. As an old friend, Mrs. Jedsley permitted herself the curiosity; but even from an old f...

It was many weeks afterwards that he told her what Mary had said. Her woe, not selfish, but inconsolable, made it impossible that during the first days of bereavement he should...

"You were never sure I deserved it, then," said Camelia, stooping to gather up her dog for a swift kiss, and laughing over his round head at Perior's stiffness; "else you would...

But retribution followed Camelia's manoeuvre. On the advent of Mr. Rodrigg, very red and hot after a long country walk with Lord Haversham (who also had axes to grind), Perior s...

When Mrs. Fox-Darriel descended to the drawing-room a quarter of an hour later, she found Lady Paton and Mary alone with Mrs. Jedsley, who as yet showed no intention of departin...

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-s...

"I should like to see him," Mary's voice had now a thread only of breath; to speak at all she had to speak very slowly, "and you must tell him first, that I know."

So he was in London. Camelia, sitting at home in the library, could think of the nearness with a new calm. She was preparing herself to meet its closer approach. She was not lea...

Camelia galloped home furiously. The tragedy was then to be consummated. He would not put out a finger to avert it. Mary would go down into the pit of nothingness, and her love,...

On the sunny autumn day with which this story opens, Miss Paton was in the morning room at Enthorpe Lodge, waiting for some one--a some one who to her was not a nobody; and thou...

Camelia during the next few days was conscious of an expectant pause. There was a page to be turned. She kept her own hand from it; for a day or two, at least, she would not sti...

Camelia felt, in the glaring pause Mr. Rodrigg made before Perior's baffling presence, that she herself was the red scarf he sought. Her mind, alert in self-defence, even in thi...

Mrs. Fox-Darriel was walking across the hall on her way to the staircase when Camelia entered. She had not seen Camelia since the morning's catastrophe, a catastrophe as yet una...