Camelia's gray eyes kindled as she read, and her lips parted involuntarily; she drew quick, shallow little breaths. Oh! through it all went that fervor, that cold, bracing fervor she knew and loved.
Perior's strong feeling was at times like a clear, indignant wind, sweeping before it cowering littlenesses. Her mind half forgot him as she read, conscious as was her heart. For the first time the intrinsic right of the bill was borne in upon her. She had glibly dressed its merits, laughing at her own theatrical dexterity. She had never really cared for any bill. Now it became the greatest, the only bill in the world. Her ardor rushed past the unfortunate initiator, to fall at the propagator's feet. Ah! if she could but help now, and for his sake! Poor Sir Arthur!
Mary, who from her seat could just see, beyond the sharply held review, the lovely line of Camelia's cheek, the little ear, set in its delicate closeness against the shining hair, Mary, intent on the rising color in this bit of cheek, had quite stopped sewing. Her pale eyes widened in a devouring significance, her lips set tightly on repressed pain. Mary, too, had read the article.
Coming to the end of it, Camelia slanted the paper downwards, and vaguely, over the top of it, looked at the fire. Then suddenly her eyes met Mary's. A violent shock of self-consciousness shook her through and through. She felt herself snatch back her secret from a precipice edge of revelation--revelation to dull Mary, of all people. Mary, against whom, in regard to Perior, she had long felt--not knowing that she felt it--a strong, reasonless antagonism. She could not shake and slap her secret, as a frightened mother slaps and shakes her rescued child; but she could turn the terrified anger on its cause, and, in a strangely pitched voice, she said, "What are you staring at? You look like a spy!"
Mary gave a great start. If indeed she had been slapped outright her guilty amazement could not have been more cruel.
She stammered at a repetition of "staring"; but no words came. Her face was scarlet. Camelia was immediately sorry, but not one whit less angry, more so, perhaps, since pity is often an irritating ingredient; and, too, she felt that to any one less stupid her very outburst might have betrayed her. She was angry with herself as well as with Mary. Mary's very helplessness was repulsive, and she hated to see her light blue eyes set in that scarlet confusion.