"I loved him, Mary, and--I imagined that he must love me. My vanity was so great that I thought I could choose or reject him. I accepted Sir Arthur--from spite--partly, and then I was dreadfully frightened. On the very day I accepted Sir Arthur I sent for Mr. Perior. Mary, I made love to him. I did not tell him I was engaged; I wanted to escape from that blunder unscathed. I could not believe in his embarrassment, nor in the reality of his scorn when he found me out. I broke my engagement--as you know. I went to Mr. Perior's house. I entreated him to love me--I hung about his neck, cried, implored. He did not love me; he rejected me. He scorns me--he is sorry for me; he is my friend, but he scorns me. I was not playing with him--you see that now. I adore him--and he does not love me at all."
Uncovering her face, Camelia found Mary's eyes fixed upon her.
"Do you understand now, Mary, why I went to him? I loved you so--was so sorry for you--so infinitely sorry--for had I not felt it all? I never told him that you thought he might have loved you; but I thought it myself, I thought that he might love you, indeed, when he _knew_ you--knew the sweetness, the sadness of your hidden love. If he refused, Mary, it was because he respected you too highly and himself--to act any falsity towards you. It was not like my rejection; there was no shame, no abasement for you. You have his reverent pity, his deep, loving devotion. Don't regret, dear Mary, that through my well-meant folly he really knows you now." She paused, and Mary still lay silent, slowly closing and unclosing her hand on the sheet.
"Believe me, Mary," said Camelia, the monotony of her recitative yielding to an appealing tremor, "I have told you the truth--the very truth. I have not hidden a thought from you."
"You love him?" Mary asked, almost musingly.
"And you wanted him to marry me," Mary added presently, pondering it seemed.
"Oh, Mary!" said Camelia, weeping, "I did. I longed for it, prayed for it--I would have given my life to have him marry you. Mary, believe me, when I tell you that to atone in however a little measure for your dreary life, I would die--oh gladly, gladly."
"Would it not have been worse than dying?" Mary asked in a voice that seemed suddenly to subtly smile, though she herself lay unsmiling in the shadowed whiteness of the bed.