"Mr. Perior? Yes, Miss; in the laboratory with Job Masters. Just go up, Miss, and I'll take the horse round to the stables."
The laboratory was at the top of the house. Camelia found herself panting from the swiftness of her ascension when she reached the door. Entering, she faced the white light from the wide expanse of window, which overlooked on bright days miles of wooded, rolling country, to-day the sea of mist. Perior's back was to her, and he was bending with an intent interest over a microscope; a collection of glass jars was on the table, and Job Masters, his elementary features lit by the intelligent gravity of close attention, was standing beside him. Perior was saying--
"Now, Job, take a look at it." His gray head did not turn.
"It's Miss Paton, sir," Job volunteered. At that Perior rose hastily, and Camelia advancing, looked vaguely at Job, at the microscope, at the jars of infusoria.
A thought of the last visit had shot painfully through Perior on hearing her name, but, after one stare at her white face, his fear, freed from any selfish terror, took on a sympathetic acuteness.
"Very well. You may go, Job," and as Job's heavy footsteps passed beyond the door, "What is it, Camelia?" he asked, holding her hands, his anxiety questioning her eyes.
For a moment, the press of all that must be said crowding upon her, of all that must be said with a self-control that must not waver or misinterpret through weakness, Camelia could not speak. She looked at him with a certain helplessness.
"Sit down, you are faint," said Perior, greatly alarmed, but, shaking her head, she only put her hand on the back of a chair he brought forward.
"I have something terrible to tell you, Michael." That she should use his name impressed him even more than her announcement, emphasized the gravity of the situation in which he was to find himself with her. In the ensuing pause their eyes met with a preparatory solemnity.
"Michael, Mary is dying." He saw then that her eyes seized him with a deep severity of demand. The shock, though not unexpected, found him unprepared.
"Yes, she knows it. Listen. She told me everything. It was more horrible than you can imagine. She told me how cruel I had been to her--how I had neglected her--how I had cut again and again into her very soul. She hates me, she hates her life, but she is afraid of death. She is not going to die happily, hopefully, as one would have thought Mary would die. She is dying desperately and miserably, for she sees that being good means merely being trodden on by the bad. She has had nothing, and she regrets everything." Perior dropped again into the chair by the table. He covered his eyes with his hands.