"Mr. Perior?" Mrs. Fox-Darriel's vagueness was not affected. "One of the vegetables, my dear? Has not the curiosity of the neighborhood exhausted itself?"
"Ah--this vegetable isn't curious, I fear, not a shoot shows at least. If he is curious he will pretend not to be, and pretend very successfully."
"That is subtle for a vegetable. Perior, the name is familiar. Who is this evasive person?"
Miss Paton's serene eyes looked over her friend's head at the strip of blue and green outside framed by the long window. She was asking herself with an inward smile for her own perversity, whether she had not come down into the country for the purpose of seeing the "evasive person." She would not mind owning to it in the least. Pickles after sweets; she anticipated the tart taste of disapproval pleasantly.
"He is my oldest friend; he doesn't admire me in the least--so I am very fond of him. I christened him 'Alceste,' and he retaliated with 'Célimène.' He is forty odd; a bachelor; he lives in a square stone house, and taught me very nearly everything I know. My Greek is almost as good as my skirt dancing."
"The square-stone gentleman didn't teach you skirt-dancing, I suppose. I begin to place him. The editor; the family friend; the misanthrope."
"Yes, my 'Alceste.' He has reason for misanthropy. His life has been a succession of disappointments. I am one of them, I fear."
"Dear me, Camelia!" Mrs. Fox-Darriel sat upright, "have you ever dallied with this provincial Diogenes?"
Miss Paton smiled over the supposition. "His disappointments are moral, not amorous. Why do I tell you this, I wonder?"
"To show me that you don't care for him perhaps," said Mrs. Fox-Darriel, who to tell the truth, was rather alarmed. Since she had resigned herself to a planetary, a reflected brilliancy, her star at least must never wane; its orbit must widen. Camelia's whole manner seemed suddenly suspicious. She was evidently waiting for this person, pleased, evidently, to talk of him, and though Camelia might be trusted for a full appreciation of her future's possibilities, Mrs. Fox-Darriel was hardly satisfied by the frankness of her "Oh! but I do care for him; he preoccupies me."
Mrs. Fox-Darriel reflected for some moments on the dangers of country-house propinquity and retrospective intimacy before saying pleasantly--