By-and-by, however, when she had become a little used to the tone of the
works, and had asked herself, what were the books put there for, unless
to be read, she plucked up courage, as her young friends would have
said--albeit angels might have wept at it--and overcame her notions so
far as to be able to take down from its shelf and become deeply
interested in one of the Frenchiest of the set, while three or four
people were sitting in the library!

A triumph that! Howbeit, when she went to bed that night there was a
persistent pain of dry unhappiness in her heart, and a self-contemptuous
feeling, which she tried to get the better of by calling it _ennui_. But
in time a kind of hardness, at once flexible and impenetrable, began to
encase her, rendering her course more easy, less liable to
embarrassment, more self-confident than before.

At length a crisis was brought on by the attempt of the boldest of her
admirers to kiss her. She repelled him passionately, facing him with
gleaming eyes, and lips white with anger and disgust. He was surprised,
at first--then angry; but she spoke to him in a way that cowed, and
finally almost made him ashamed of himself. He even went so far,
afterward, as to try to knock a fellow down for speaking disrespectfully
of "Neelie." For her own part, she locked herself into her room, and
cried tempestuously for half an hour; then she spent a still longer time
in lying with her heated face upon the pillow, reviewing the incidents
of her life since Bressant had entered into it. He was the superior of
any man she had met before or since: she was sure of it now; it could no
longer be called the infatuation of inexperience. She took herself well
to task for the recent laxity and imprudence of her conduct; did not
spare to cut where the flesh was tender; and resolved never again to lay
herself open to blame.

This was very well, but the mood was too strained and exalted to be
depended upon. Cornelia got up from the disordered bed, put it to rights
again, washed her stained face carefully, rearranged her hair, and went
down-stairs. All that afternoon she was cold, grave, and reserved;
inquiries after her health met with a chilling answer, and her friends
wisely concluded to leave her malady, whatever it were, to the cure of
time. As dinner progressed, Cornelia began to thaw: when Mr. Grumblow,
the member of Congress, requested her, with solemn and oppressive
courtesy, to do him the honor of taking a glass of wine with him, she
responded graciously; and as the toasts circulated, she first looked
upon her ideal resolves with good-humored tolerance, and then they
escaped her memory altogether. She became once more lively and
sparkling, and carried on what she imagined was a very brilliant
conversation with two or three people at once. By the time she was
ready to retire, she had practised anew the whole list of her
lately-abrogated accomplishments; and she wound up by picking the French
novel out of the corner into which she had disdainfully thrown it twelve
hours before, reading it in bed until she fell asleep, and dreaming that
she was its heroine. And yet she had not forgotten to wind up Bressant's
watch, and put it in its usual place under her pillow.

It might seem strange that his memory should not have kept her beyond
the reach of deleterious influences. But a young girl's love is any
thing but a preservative, if it shall yield her, in any aspect, other
than such pure and delicate thoughts as she would not scruple to whisper
in her mother's ear, or to ask God's blessing on at night. Should there
be any circumstance or incident, however seemingly trifling and
unimportant, in her reminiscences, which nevertheless keeps recurring to
the mind with a slight twinge of regret--a feeling that it would have
been just as well had it never happened--then is love a dangerous
companion. Gradually does the trifling spot grow upon her; in trying to
justify it, she succeeds only in lowering the whole idea of love to its
level; and this once accomplished, in all future intercourse with her
lover she must be undefended by the shield of her maidenly integrity.
And not all men are great enough not to presume on woman's weakness,
even though it be that woman, to assert whose honor and purity they
would risk their lives against the world.

Some such quality of earthiness Cornelia may have felt in the course of
her acquaintance with Bressant, preventing her love from ennobling and
elevating her. Alas! if it were so. If she cannot draw a high
inspiration from the affection which must be her loftiest sentiment,
what shall be her safeguard, and who her champion?

In the course of ten days or a fortnight, Aunt Margaret announced that
the condition of her head would admit of traveling, and the
long-expected tour began. But the more important consequences of
Cornelia's fashionable experiences had already taken place.

CHAPTER XVII.

SOPHIE'S CONFESSION.

Sophie did not stay long in the invalid's room after the awakening they
had undergone with respect to one another. She went instinctively to her
father's study, and, entering the open door, kissed the old man ere he
was well aware of her presence. He took her affectionately upon his
knee, and hugged her up to him with homely tenderness.

"My precious little daughter!" quoth he; "what would your old father do
without you?"

"Am I so much to you, papa?" asked she, with her cheek resting upon his
shoulder.

"Very much--very much, Sophie: too much, perhaps; for I don't see how I
could bear to lose you."

"Do you mean to have me die, papa?"

"How is your sick boy getting along?" returned the professor, clearing
his throat, and not seeming to hear his daughter's words.

Sophie caught a breath, and paled a little at the thought of the news
she had to tell about the sick boy. Her father had just told her she was
precious to him, and she felt that to be married might involve a
separation virtually as complete as that of death, and perhaps harder to
bear. But, again, she needed his sympathy and approval: and, sooner or
later, he must hear the truth. She was not, perhaps, aware that
etiquette should have closed her lips upon the subject until after
Bressant had spoken to the professor; at all events, she had no
intention of delegating or postponing her confidence.

"He seemed quite well when I left him. I have been having a--talk with
him, papa."

"He begins to show the effects of being talked to by you, my dear.
You're a wise little woman in some ways, that's certain! and have done
him good in more ways than one," said papa, with parental complacency.

Sophie shrank at this, remembering how lately she had fed herself with
the same idea. She had learned a great deal about herself since
discovering how little of herself she knew.

"He is a--man!" said she, trying to throw into the word an expression of
its best and loftiest meaning. "I can do very little to help him."

"Hope to see him a man some day, my dear," returned the professor,
gathering his eyebrows. "Has a great many faults at present. Why, in
some respects, he's as ignorant and inexperienced as a child. Very
one-sided affair still, I fear, that soul of his!"

"One-sided, papa?"

"Yes: don't believe it would carry him very far toward heaven, as it is
now," said the old gentleman, whose severity of judgment was cultivated
in this instance as a preservative against possible disappointment. "He
needs melting in a crucible."

"What does that mean?"

"If you weren't a wise little woman, as I said, I shouldn't be talking
about my pupil's character and management with you, my dear. But I can
trust you as well as if you were forty;" and here he gave her another
little hug, which made Sophie feel like a receiver of stolen goods.
"Well, now, theorizing won't do a young fellow like that much good. He
needs something real--that he can take hold of, and that'll take hold of
him. You and I can't give it him--not more than an impetus in the right
direction, at any rate. But the only thing that can make his future
tolerably secure--make it safe to count upon him (or upon any other man,
for that matter), is for him to fall heartily and soundly in love, in
the old-fashioned way, and with a strong-hearted, worthy woman."

"O papa! do you really think marriage will help him to be greater and
better?"

"It's the only thing for him, my dear," said Professor Valeyon; and,
although he was looking his guilty little daughter straight in the face,
and at such short range, too, this would-be sharp-sighted old man of
wisdom never thought to ask himself why she blushed so. "As soon as he
gets well again, I must see to getting him somewhere where he can have a
chance to profit by what we have done for him."

"Papa," said Sophie, sitting up, and stroking the old gentleman's white
beard, "you don't know how happy it makes me to hear you think that to
love and to be loved will be good for him."

"So anxious to get rid of him, eh?"

"No; oh! papa, don't you see? it's because--because I _never_ want to
get rid of him!" and Sophie, catching her father suddenly around the
neck, hid her face in his linen coat-collar.

The professor, his features discharged of all expression, sat
stone-still, looking straight before him. Had Death been embracing him,
instead of his daughter, he could hardly have been struck more
motionless. Existence, spiritual as well as physical, seemed for a space
to have come to a stand-still.

By-and-by, startled at his silence, Sophie raised her head and looked at
him with alarmed eyes. With an effort, he turned his face toward her,
and smiled as naturally as though his mouth had been frozen.

"I'm an old man, you see, my dear: a surprise like this makes me feel
it," he made shift to say, in an uncertain voice. "So--you're engaged to
each other?"

"We're waiting for you to say we may be, papa."

"It is right--it is just!" said the professor, solemnly, though still
with a sluggish utterance. "I sought to glorify God to the end of mine
own glorification, and lo! He hath taken from me my own heart's blood!"
Swept off his feet by the profundity of his emotion, the ministerial
form of speech, so long disused, rose naturally to the old man's lips.

But presently, the paralyzing effect of the shock beginning to wear off,
he drew a few long breaths, and found himself growing very hot. He took
out his handkerchief and wiped away the perspiration that had gathered
on his forehead. Then he took his little daughter strongly yet
tremblingly to his heart, and kissed her more than once.

"God bless you! my darling--my Sophie--you're my Sophie still, if you
are in love with that--great overgrown rascal. I'm a fool--an old fool!
Well--and how long has this been going on between you, my darling?"

Sophie's heart, which, in the passionate tumult of her recent interview
with her lover, had remained so steady and unfaltering, began now to
beat with such violence as to impede her utterance and visibly to shake
her. She was resolved to show herself to her father even as she was.

"I hardly can say how long, papa--I think--I think it must have been
a--a long time--at least, on my side. Oh! I have been so false--so false
to myself, and so unwomanly! I have courted him, papa--_I_, papa--think
of it! I've thrown myself in his way, and--and made him interested in
me; and talked to him about things that--no one but his mother, or you,
should have done. Poor fellow!--I've forced myself upon him, papa. I
took advantage of his illness and helplessness, and pretended all the
time I was thinking only of his spiritual welfare, and--and not of--of
any thing else. That was the wickedest part. And yet, somehow, I
deceived myself too--or, rather, I wouldn't see the truth: and I didn't
know--papa, I really believe I didn't know that I--loved him, till
he--till he began to speak of it; then it seemed suddenly to fill all my
heart, as if it had always lived there. For I succeeded, papa: I've won
his love, and, oh! he loves me so! he loves me so! and so I've found my
punishment in my happiness. God is so just and good. The happier his
love makes me, you see, the more I shall be humbled to think how it
became mine. It is well for me, for I was proud and reserved and full of
self-conceit. And you really think it will not hurt him to love me, and
to have me love him, papa?"

"Stuff and nonsense!" growled the old gentleman, testily; "hurt him!"

But the professor was really a very wise man, in spite of his occasional
blindness; and he refrained from showing Sophie the exaggeration and
distortion which marked the view she took of her conduct. He saw it
would involve lowering the high integrity of her ideal conceptions
respecting delicacy and honor--hardly worth while, merely for the sake
of explaining the distinction between a trifling piece of self-deception
and mistaken vanity, and the severe and unrelenting sentence which
Sophie had passed upon herself. Meanwhile, every word she had uttered
had been an indirect, but none the less telling blow upon a sore place
in his own conscience. It was long since Professor Valeyon had stood so
low in his own self-esteem.

They sat awhile in silence, Sophie nestling up to her father as if
seeking protection from the very love that had come to her; and he
sighed, and sighed again, and coughed, and pulled his nose and his
beard, and finally blew his nose. Then, depositing Sophie upon her feet,
he got slowly up, stretched himself, and went for his pipe.

"Run off, my dear. Go up in your room, or out in the garden, or
somewhere. I must be alone a little while, you know; must think it all
over, and see how things stand. Besides, I must step in and see this
fellow who's going to rob me of my daughter, and tell him what I think
of him. Come, off with you!"

"You'll be happy about it--you'll forgive us, won't you, papa?" she
said, turning at the door.

The old gentleman shuffled heavily up to her, and kissed her on the
forehead.

"God bless you, and God's will be done, my darling!" said he; but at
that moment he could say no more.

An hour afterward, however, when the professor knocked the ashes out of
his second pipe, and laid his hand upon the latch of Bressant's door,
the expression upon his strongly-cut features was neither gloomy nor
severe. There was a look in his eyes of benignant sweetness, all the
more impressive because it made one wonder how it could find a place
beneath such stern eyebrows and so deeply lined a forehead. But, cutting
off an offending right hand, although a bitter piece of work enough for
the time being, may, in its after-effect, work as gracious a miracle in
an older and more forbidding gentleman even than Professor Valeyon.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A FLANK MOVEMENT.

Bressant was lying comfortably upon his bed with his eyes closed; no one
would have imagined there had been any outburst or convulsion of passion
in his mental or emotional organism. He breathed easily; there was a
pale tint of red in his cheeks, above his close, brown beard; his
forehead was slightly moist, and his pulse, on which the surgeon laid
his finger with professional instinct, beat quietly and regularly. In
entering upon the world of love, all marks of wounds received upon the
journey seemed to have passed away.

He opened his eyes at the professor's touch, and fixed them upon the old
gentleman in such a serene stare of untroubled complacency as one
sometimes receives from a baby nine months old.

"Well, sir"--the professor, from some subtle delicacy of feeling
respecting the prospective change in their relationship, adopted this
form of address in preference to that more paternal one he had been in
the habit of using since Bressant's accident--"well, sir, how do you
find yourself now?"

"Much better; I shall soon be well now. I feel differently from ever
before--very light and full here," said the young man, indicating the
region of his heart.

"I've seen Sophie," observed Professor Valeyon, after a somewhat long
silence, which Bressant, who had calmly closed his eyes again, showed no
intention of breaking.

"Sophie and I love each other," responded he, meditatively, and rather
to himself than to the father. The latter could not but feel some
surprise at the untroubled confidence the young man's manner displayed.
Before he could put his thought into fitting words, the other spoke
again.

"I've been thinking, I should like to marry her."

"You'd like to marry her?" repeated the old gentleman, with a mixture of
sternness and astonishment, his forehead reddening. "What else do you
suppose I expected, sir?"

Bressant turned over on his side, and regarded him with some curiosity.

"Do all people who love each other, or because they love each other,
marry?" demanded he.

For a moment, the professor seemed to suspect some latent satire in this
question; but the young man's face convinced him to the contrary.

"In many marriages, there's little love--true love--on either side;
that's certain," said he, passing his hand down his face, and looking
grave. "But marriage was ordained for none but lovers."

"The reason I want to be married to Sophie is because I love her so much
I couldn't live without her," resumed Bressant, as if stating some
unusual circumstance.

"Humph!" ejaculated the professor, partly amused and partly puzzled.

Bressant rubbed his forehead, and fingered his beard awhile, and then
continued:

"We've been reading poetry lately, and romances, and such things. I used
to think they were nonsense--good for nothing; because they came out so
beautifully, and represented love to be so great an element in the
world. But now I see they were not good enough; they are much below the
truth; I mean to write poetry and romances myself!"

This tickled Professor Valeyon so much, that he burst out in a most
genuine laugh. The intellectual animal of two or three months before
seemed to have laid aside all claims to what his brain had won for him,
and to be beginning existence over again with a new object and new
materials. And had Bressant indeed been a child, the succession of his
ideas and impulses could hardly have been more primitive and natural.

"What's to become of our Hebrew and history, if you turn poet?" inquired
the old gentleman, still chuckling.

Bressant turned his head away and closed his eyes wearily. "I don't want
any thing more to do with that," said he. "Love is study enough, and
work enough, for a lifetime. Mathematics, and logic, and philosophy--all
those things have nothing to do with love, and couldn't help me in it.
It's outside of every thing else: it has laws of its own: I'm just
beginning to learn them."

"A professional lover! well, as long as you recognize the sufficiency of
one object in your studies, you might do worse, that's certain. But you
can't make a living out of it, my boy."

"I don't need money, I have enough; if I hadn't, money-making is for
men without hearts; but mine is bigger than my head; I must give myself
up to it."

"That won't do," returned the professor, shaking his head. "Lovers must
earn their bread-and-butter as well as people with brains. Besides,"
here his face and tone became serious, "there's one thing we've both
forgotten. This matter of your false name--you can't be married as
Bressant, you know: and if the tenure of your property depends, as you
said, on preserving the _incognito_, I have reason to believe that you
stand an excellent chance of losing every cent of it, the moment the
minister has pronounced your real name."

"No matter!" said the young man, with an impatient movement, as if to
dismiss an unprofitable subject. "I shall have Sophie; my father's will
can't deprive me of her. I don't want to be famous, nor to have a great
reputation--except with her."

The old man was touched at this devotion, unreasonable and impracticable
though it was. He laid his hand kindly on the invalid's big shoulder.

"I don't say but that a wife's a good exchange for the world, my boy;
I'm glad you should feel it, too. But when you marry her, you promise to
support her, as long as you have strength and health to do it. It's a
natural and necessary consequence of your love for her"--and here the
professor paused a moment to marvel at the position in which he found
himself--stating the first axioms of life to such a man as this pupil of
his; "and you should be unwilling to take her, as I certainly should be
to give her, on any other terms. If your hands are empty, you must at
any rate be able to show that they won't always continue so."

"Well, but I don't want to think about that just now; I can be a farmer,
or a clerk; I can make a living with my body, if I can't with my mind;
and I can write to Mrs. Vanderplanck, some time, and find out just how
things are."

"Very well--very well! or perhaps I'd better write to her
myself--well--and as long as you are on your back, there'll be no use in
troubling you with business--that's certain! And perhaps things may turn
out better than they look, in the end."

As Professor Valeyon pronounced this latter sentence, he smiled to
himself pleasantly and mysteriously. He seemed to fancy he had stronger
grounds for believing in a happy issue, than, for some reason, he was at
liberty to disclose. And the smile lingered about the corners of his
mouth and eyes, as if the issue in question were to be of that
peculiarly harmonious kind usually supposed to be reserved for the
themes of poems, or the conclusions of novels.

"I never was interested to hear of the every-day lives of men who have
loved, and wanted to make their way in the world; for I never expected I
should be such a man. Now, I'm sorry; it would have been useful to me,
wouldn't it?"

"Perhaps it might," responded the old gentleman, musing at the change in
the attitude of the young man's mind--once so self-sufficient and
assertive, now so dependent and inexperienced. "Very few lives are bare
and empty enough not to teach one something worth knowing. I know the
events of one man's life," he added, after a few moments of thoughtful
consideration; "perhaps it might lead to some good, if I were to tell
them to yon."

"Did he marry a woman he loved?" demanded Bressant.

"You can judge better of that when you hear what happened before his
marriage," returned the professor, apparently a little put out by the
abruptness of the question. "He made several mistakes in life; most of
them because he didn't pay respect enough to circumstances; thought that
to adhere to fixed principles was the whole duty of a man: nothing to be
allowed to the accidents of life, or to the various and unaccountable
natures of men, their uncertainty, fallibility, and so on. One of the
first resolutions he made--and he's never broken it, for when he grew
wise enough to do so, the opportunity had gone by forever--was never to
leave his native country. He wanted to prove to himself, and to
everybody else whom it might concern, that a man of fair abilities might
become learned and wise, without ever helping himself to the good things
that lay beyond the shadow of his native flag. 'The majority of people
have to live where they are born,' was his argument; 'I'll be their
representative.' Well, that would seem all well enough; but it stood in
his way twice--each time lost him an opportunity that has never come
again--the opportunity to be distinguished, and perhaps great; and the
opportunity to have a happy home, and a luxurious one. It was better for
him, no doubt, that his life was a hard and disappointed one, instead
of--as it might have been; he's had blessings enough, that's certain;
but he has much to regret, too; the more, because the ill effects of a
man's folly and willfulness fall upon his friends quite as often, and
sometimes more heavily, than upon himself.

"He was a poor man in college, and an orphan. The property of his family
had been lost in the War of 1812; from then till he was twenty-one, he
had followed a dozen trades, and saved a couple of hundred dollars; and
he'd picked up book-learning enough to enter the sophomore class. The
first thing he did was to make a friend; he loved him with his whole
heart; thought nothing was too good for him, and so on. He and his
friend led the class for three years; and up to the time of the last
examination, he was first and his friend second. In the examination they
sat side by side; one question the friend couldn't answer; the other
wrote it out for him; after the examination the two papers were found to
be alike in the answer to that question, and the friend was summoned
before the faculty, and asked if he had copied it. He denied it--said it
had been copied from him; so he took the first rank in graduating, and
the other was dropped several places."

"What became of their friendship after that?" inquired Bressant.

"He I'm telling you of never knew any thing of what his friend had done
till long afterward. Well, the faculty and some of the wealthy patrons
of the university determined to send the first scholar abroad, to finish
his education: he accepted the offer eagerly, and sailed for Europe,
without bidding his friend good-by. Afterward, the faculty made the same
offer to him, on the consideration that he had stood so well, during his
course, until the examination. But he declined it: it was contrary to
his principle of never leaving his country."

"What sort of a man was the friend?" asked Bressant, who was paying
close attention, with his hand at his ear.

"Clever, with a winning manner, and fine-looking; had a pleasant, easy
voice; never lost his temper that I know of." The professor paused,
perhaps to arrange his ideas, ere he went on. "The man I'm telling you
of left the college-yard with as much of the world before him as lies
between the fifteenth and twenty-fifth parallels of latitude, and the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He'd made up his mind to be a physician;
and in a year he was qualified to enter the hospital; worked there four
years, and, by the time he was twenty-nine, he had an office of his own
and a good practice.

"At last, he fell in love with a beautiful woman; she was the daughter
of one of his patients--a Southerner with a little Spanish blood in him.
The young doctor had--under Providence--saved the man's life; and, since
he himself came of a good family--none better--and had a respectable
income, there wasn't much difficulty in arranging the match. The only
condition was, that the father should never be out of reach of his
daughter, as long as he lived."

"Was this Southerner rich?"

"Very rich; and a dowry would go with the daughter enough to make them
more than independent for the rest of their lives. Well, just about that
time, the friend who had gone to Europe came back. He'd done well
abroad, and-was qualified for a high position at home. He was engaged to
marry a stylish, aristocratic girl, who was not, however, wealthy. But
he seemed very glad to see the doctor, and the doctor certainly was to
see him, and invited him to stay at his house a while, and he introduced
him into the house of his intended wife."

Here the professor broke off from his story, and, getting up from his
chair, he passed two or three times up and down the room; stopping at
the window to pull a leaf from the extended branch of a cherry-tree
growing outside, and again, by the empty fireplace, to roll the leaf up
between his finger and thumb, and throw it upon the hearth. When he
returned to the bedside, he dropped himself into his chair with the
slow, inelastic heaviness of age.

"The fellow played him a scurvy trick," resumed he, presently. "Exactly
what he said or did will never be known, but it was all he safely could
to put his friend in a bad light. It was because he wanted the young
lady for himself; he was ambitious, and needed her money to help him on.
What he said made a good deal of impression on the father; but the
daughter wouldn't believe it then--at any rate, she loved the doctor
still, and would, as long as she knew he loved her."

"Why didn't the other manage to make her think he didn't?"

"Well, sir, he did manage it," returned the professor, compressing his
white-bearded lips, and lowering his eyebrows. "He told the father some
story of having met relations of his in Spain; told him the climate
would cure him of all his ailments, without need of a physician, and
persuaded him to make the journey at last. The doctor heard of it first
by a note written by his intended father-in-law. It contained no
request nor encouragement to accompany them--of course, the daughter was
to go too; her father wouldn't separate from her. But the doctor's
friend had not trusted only to that: he knew that the other's resolution
never to leave his country was not likely to be broken, so he was quite
secure."

"And the doctor knew nothing of how his friend was cheating him?"

"No, not then. Far from it; he showed him the letter, and asked him for
advice. He never dreamed of doubting his constancy, either to himself or
to the girl he was engaged to marry. His friend counseled him to write a
letter to her he meant to make his wife, explaining his position, and
asking her not to leave him. He would carry it to her, and advocate it
himself, he said, and do all in his power to influence the father. The
young doctor didn't altogether relish this course, nevertheless he
trusted in his friend, wrote the letter, and gave it into his hands.

"He never saw his friend after that day. The next morning came an answer
from the young lady--a cruel and cold rejection of him--repudiation of
his love, and a doubt of his honor. It bewildered him, and, for a time,
crushed him. Long afterward, he found out that she had never seen the
letter he wrote, but a very different one, of his friend's concoction.

"Very soon afterward, they were gone--all three! and, before a year was
passed, he heard that his friend and the daughter were married, and the
father died of a fever contracted in Spain.

"He tried to go on as usual for several months, but it was no use. At
last, he left his practice, and all his connections, and wandered over
the United States--through towns and wildernesses. He rode across the
plains on a mustang; clambered through the gorges of the Rocky
Mountains; saw the tide come in through the Golden Gate at San
Francisco. He pushed north as far as Canada, and thence came down the
Mississippi to New Orleans. From there he crossed to the Pacific coast
again, and lived to find himself a second time in San Francisco. He
didn't stay there long, but struck overland, slanting southward, and, in
four or five months, appeared at Charleston, South Carolina. So he
worked up the Atlantic coast to New York. By the time he got there, he
was older and wiser, and strengthened, body and mind, by a rough
experience. He resolved to travel no more; but, as yet, it was not in
his power to feel happy.

"Much had happened in his absence. His friend, after living three or
four years with his wife in Europe, was separated from her--not,
however, by a regular divorce--and she had disappeared, and had not
since been heard of. It was reported that she was dead. She had left
with her husband a son, two or three years old, at that time a sickly
little fellow, scarcely expected to live. It was supposed that the
mother had discovered that it was her money, and not herself, that her
husband cared for, and, perhaps, too, may have imagined him to be still
thinking of his first love, who, indeed, was said to have in some way
fomented the quarrel between them, though how, or to what end, was never
known. She, by-the-way, after an absence of some years from New York,
suddenly reappeared there, and married a wealthy old Knickerbocker, who
died not long afterward, and left her his property. She became eminent
in society, and was intimate with all the most distinguished people. Her
former lover returned from Europe, with his little son, and, I believe,
settled somewhere in the neighborhood of New York. They met, and, I
understand, came to be on very friendly terms with one another, but the
conditions of their lives would have prevented the possibility of
marriage, even had they desired it.

"Well, it was before the old Knickerbocker's death that he I am telling
you of first arrived in the city. He gave up medicine, and devoted
himself to other studies; and, in the course of a few years, he found
himself occupying the chairs of History and of Science at the University
of New York. He also paid some attention to politics, and became, for a
while, a person of really considerable renown and distinction. He was
respected by the most influential persons in the city. Among the rest,
he became acquainted with the widow--as she was by this time--of the
Knickerbocker--and she showed him every kindness and attention. But he
did her the injustice of not believing her kindness genuine; he imagined
that she cared for nothing but fashion and display, and was polite to
him only because she thought he would add a little to her drawing-rooms.
At length, a sudden weariness of his mode of life coming over him, he
resigned his public positions, and his professorships, and took lodgings
in the family of a poor clergyman in Boston. While there, he took up the
study of divinity, and, before long, was fully qualified for ordination.
But, at this time, he fell, all at once, dangerously ill, and lay at
death's door.

"He owed his life to the care that the daughter of the clergyman took of
him. She was a sweet, gentle girl, a good deal younger than he; but she
grew to love him--perhaps because she had saved him from death. When he
recovered, they were married, and found a great deal of happiness; there
was no more passionate love, for him, of course; but he could feel
gratitude, and tenderness, and a steady and deep affection. They had two
children, and when they were five or six years old, the parents moved to
the country, and took a house in an out-of-the-way village."

"Is that all?" demanded Bressant, eying the professor's face with great
intentness.

"There's not much more. One of the first persons the minister--such he
was now--met, on his entrance into the village, was the woman he had
loved first--the wife of his false friend--she whom he had long believed
dead. She had settled, several years before, in this place, whither he
had unawares followed her. In an interview--the first for nearly half a
lifetime--all the old errors and falsehoods were cleared up. She told
him how her husband's heartlessness and insolent indifference had made
her leave him; and how, for the sake of her son, and partly also out of
pride, she had made no attempt to repossess herself of the fortune with
which she had endowed her husband at their marriage. The hardest of all
had been to leave her son, whom she loved with her whole heart; but he
was sickly, and she dared not expose him to the chances of privation and
hardship, such as she expected to endure. With some three thousand
dollars in her pocket, she had come to America, and since then had
never heard a word of those she had left, nor had they of her.

"About three years after his arrival, the minister's wife died. He took
his two children, and went with them to New York, where they staid
nearly a year; and the widow of the old Knickerbocker found them out,
and was as cordial as ever. But finally the minister decided to return
to his country dwelling, and there he still remains."

As Professor Valeyon concluded, he looked toward his auditor, having
been conscious, especially during the latter part of the narrative, of
the peculiar magnetic sensation which the steady glance of the young
man's eyes produced.

But at the same moment, Bressant turned his head away, and closed his
eyes, as if wearied by the strain which had been imposed upon his
attention. The old gentleman presently arose, and, after a moment's
hesitation, he apparently decided not to disturb or rouse his patient
any further. He could wait until another time for whatever discussion
yet remained. So he betook himself quietly to the door.

He had nearly closed it when, thinking he heard a sudden call or
exclamation from within, he hastily reopened it, and looked into the
room. But the invalid showed no signs of having spoken. His position was
slightly changed, indeed, but his eyes were still closed, and his face
turned somewhat away from the door.

"I must have been mistaken," said Professor Valeyon, as he shut himself
into the study. He walked to the table, and, resting one hand upon it,
stood for several moments with his head bent forward, thinking. As he
raised it, a sigh escaped him; nor was his countenance so serene as it
had been half an hour before.

CHAPTER XIX.

AN INTERMISSION.

Bressant's recovery was now very rapid, as he had himself foretold. The
wedding was finally fixed for New-Year's Day at noon. They were to be
married at the Parsonage; afterward they might go South for two or three
months, but it was understood that they would return to the village
before settling permanently anywhere.

"If there isn't room for us here, we can board at Abbie's; it would be
very pleasant, wouldn't it?" said Sophie; but Bressant made no
rejoinder.

Professor Valeyon was getting on well beneath the weight of his
prospective loss. He indulged in as many comforting reflections as he
could. Cornelia would still be with him, and he loved her as much in one
way as Sophie in another. He seemed to think, too, that the bride and
groom would probably settle somewhere in the neighborhood. Again, he
felt a greater natural affection for Bressant than for any other young
man; what son-in-law, after all, would he have preferred to have? And
there may have been additional considerations equally pleasant in the
contemplation.

Sophie was in her element; the loveliness and richness of her character
came out like a sweet, sustaining perfume. In love, all her faculties
found their fullest exercise. There was no doubt nor darkness in her
soul. Without looking upon her lover as an angel, she saw in him the
grand possibilities which human nature still possesses, and felt that
she might aid them somewhat to develop and flourish.

As for Bressant, originally the least inclined of any of the circle to
be pensive and sombre, he now seemed occasionally to contend with
shadows of some kind. He was far from being habitually gloomy, but his
moods were not to be depended upon; sometimes a turn of the conversation
would seem to alter him; sometimes a word which he himself might utter;
sometimes a silence, which found him light-hearted, would leave him
troubled and restless. Sophie, so strong and trustful was her happiness,
never suspected that any thing more than the fretting of his sickness
was responsible for this, and, indeed, thought little about it at all;
for, after all, what was it compared to the full tide which swept them
both along in such an overmastering harmony?

Within a week from the day of the engagement, a letter came from
Cornelia, speaking of her desire to be at home again, and further
intimating that she meant to return in a month at farthest. She did not
write with as much liveliness and light-heartedness as usual. Sophie
read the letter aloud to Bressant and her father as they sat in the
former's room on a cool August afternoon.

"How surprised she will be to hear what has been going on!" said Sophie,
looking for Bressant to sympathize with her smile. "I'll write to her
this evening and tell her all about it." She paused to imagine
Cornelia's delight, astonishment, and playful dismay on learning that
her younger sister, whom nobody ever suspected of such a thing, was
going to be married, and to "that deaf creature," too, whom they had
discussed so freely only two months or so before. "She must know before
anybody," said Sophie; and the professor, as he rubbed his spectacles,
grunted in approval.

But Bressant chewed his mustache, and said, hastily, the blood reddening
his face: "No, no! wait--wait till she comes back. She can know it
first, still; but you had better tell her with words. You can see, with
your own eyes, then, how--how it pleases her."

"Yes, that is true," said Sophie, half reluctantly. "Well?"

Bressant lay silent, with a peering, concentrated look in his eyes, his
brows slightly contracted. He must have had an intuitive foreboding that
this matter of the two sisters would cause some difficulty, but he could
hardly as yet have had a distinct understanding of what jealousy meant.

Howbeit, the lovers grew every day more intimate. In the earlier days of
her intercourse with him Sophie had felt an involuntary shrinking from
she knew not what, but this had been entirely overcome, partly by habit,
partly from an unconscious resolve on her part not to yield to it. The
quick, intelligent sympathy of her nature discerned and interpreted the
germs of new ideas and impulses which were struggling into life in
Bressant's mind; she translated to him his better part, and warmed it
with a flood of celestial sunshine.

But the sun which makes flowers bloom brings forth weeds as well, and
it would not be strange if this awakening of Bressant's dormant
faculties should have also brought some evil to the surface which else
might never have seen the light.

In the course of another week or so the invalid had so far improved as
to be able to leave his room, and make short excursions about the house,
and on to the balcony. The feverish and morbid symptoms faded away, and
the indulgence of a Titanic appetite began to bring back the broad, firm
muscles to arms, legs, and body. He felt the returning exhilaration of
boundless vitality and restless vigor which had distinguished him before
his accident.

The summer was now something overworn; the sultry dregs of August were
ever and anon stirred by the cool finger of September. The leaves,
losing the green strength of their blood, changed color and fluttered,
wavering earthward from the boughs whereon they had spent so many
sociable months. The surrounding hills seen from the parsonage-balcony
took on subtle changes of tint; the patches of pine and evergreen showed
out more and more distinctly; the over-ripe grass in the valley lay in
lines of fragrant haycocks.

Every day, in the garden, a greater number of red and yellow leaves
drifted about the paths, or scattered themselves over the flower-beds,
or floated on the surface of the fountain-basin. Little brown birds
hopped backward and forward among the twigs, with quick, jerking tails
and sideway, speculative heads; or upon the ground, pecking at it here
and there with their little bills, as if under the impression that it
was summer's grave, and they might chance to dig her up again. But once
in a while they got discouraged, and took a sudden, rustling flight to
the roof-tree of the barn, seemingly half inclined to continue on
indefinitely southward. Then, a reluctance to leave the old place coming
over them, they would dip back again on their elastic little wings, to
hop and peck anew.

Bressant and Sophie were sitting one afternoon--it was in the first days
of September, and within less than a week of the time when they might
begin to expect Cornelia--upon the little rustic bench beside the
fountain. Their conversation had filtered softly into silence, and only
the flop-flop of the weak-backed little spout continued to prattle to
the stillness.

"I don't like it!" exclaimed Bressant, stirring his foot impatiently.
"I'd rather put my whole life into one strong, resistless shooting
upward, even if it lasted only a minute."

"The poor little fountain is happy enough," said well-balanced Sophie.

"To do any thing there must sometimes be a heat and fury in the blood;
or a whirl and passion in the brain. Volcanoes reveal the earth's
heart!" returned he, sententiously.

"They're very objectionable things though," suggested Sophie, arching
her eyebrows.

"They make beautiful mountains, whole islands, sometimes; in a man, they
show what stuff is in him. It would be better to commit a deadly crime
than to dribble out a life like that fountain's!"

"Even to speak of sin's bringing forth good, is a fearful and wicked
thing," said Sophie; and, although tears rose to her eyes, her voice was
almost stern. "But you don't know what you say: only think, and you
will shudder at it."

But Bressant was perverse. "I think any thing is better than to be
torpid. I'd rather know I could never hope for happiness hereafter, than
not have blood enough really to hope or despair at all."

"Why do you speak so?" asked Sophie, with a look of pain in her grave
little face. "Do you fear any such torpor in your own life? My love,
this hasn't always been so."

"I feel too much in me to manage, sometimes," said he, leaning forward
on his knees, and working in the sanded path with his foot. "I'm not
accustomed to myself yet: it will come all right, later. My health and
strength, too, so soon after my weakness--they intoxicate me, I think."

Sophie looked at his broad back and dark curly head, and brown, short
beard, as he sat thus beside her, and she grew pale, and sighed, "It
isn't right, dear," said she, shaking her head. "There is a quiet and
deep strength--not demonstrative--that is better than any passion: it is
less striking, I suppose, but it recognizes more a Power greater than
any we have."

"It's true--what you say always is true!" responded Bressant, throwing
himself back in the seat. "Sophie," he added, without turning his eyes
upon her, "if I shouldn't turn out all you wish, you won't stop loving
me?"

"I couldn't, I think, if I tried," replied she; and there was more of
regret than of satisfaction in her tone as she said it. "Or, if I could,
it would tear me all to pieces; and there would be nothing left but my
love to God, which is His already. All of me, except that, is love for
you."

"God and heaven seem unreal--unsubstantial, at any rate--compared with
you," said Bressant, striking his hand heavily upon the arm of the
rustic bench. "My love for you is greater than for them!"

"Oh, stop! hush!" cried Sophie, flinching back as if she had received a
mortal thrust. The light of indignation and repulse in her gray eyes was
awful to Bressant, and his own dropped beneath it. "Have you no respect
for your soul?" she continued, presently. "How long would such love
last? in what would it end? it would not be love--it would be the
deadliest kind of hate."

Bressant rose to his feet, and made a gesture with his arms in the air,
as if striving by a physical act to regain the mental force and
equilibrium which Sophie had so unexpectedly overthrown. The mighty
strength and untamed vehemence of the man's nature were exhibited in the
movement. Sophie saw, in the vision of a moment, on how wild and stormy
a sea she had embarked, and for a moment, perhaps, she quailed at the
sight. But again her great love brought back the flush of dauntless
courage, and her trembling ceased. She became aware, at that critical
moment, that she was the stronger of the two; and Bressant probably felt
it also. He had put forth all his power in a passionate and convulsive
effort to prevail over the soul of this delicate girl, and he had been
worsted in the brief, silent struggle. He did not need to look in her
clear eyes to know it.

His love must have been strong, indeed; for it stood the test of the
defeat. He sat down again, and after an almost imperceptible hesitation,
he held out his hand toward her. She put her own in it, with its
pressure, soft and delicately strong.

"I can't reason about these things--I can only feel," said he. "You can
look into my heart if you will. Don't give me up: you can help me to see
it all as you do. Isn't it your duty, Sophie, if you love me?"

"Oh! I will pray for you, my darling," she answered, almost sobbing in
the tenderness of her great heart, and laying her head upon his broad
shoulder. "I would not lose your love for all the world; but I feared
you might be led to something--something that would prevent your loving
either God or me. Promise me something, dear: if you are ever in trouble
or danger, and I'm not with you, come to me! No harm can reach us when
we're together. You need me, and I you."

"I promise," replied Bressant.

In the short silence that followed, Sophie heard, though Bressant could
not, a quick, excited, warbling voice calling her again and again by
name. She released herself from her lover's hold, and sprang up with a
cry of delight.

Bressant, surprised and defrauded, was about to remonstrate; but ere the
words came, he saw Cornelia appear upon the balcony, and he sank back
and held his peace.

CHAPTER XX.

BRESSANT CONFIDES A SECRET TO THE FOUNTAIN.

Sophie went flitting up the garden-path toward the house, and in a
moment more the sisters were in one another's arms. Bressant, glad of
the concealment afforded by the shrubbery, remained gazing moodily at
the fountain, his head on his hand. The two girls entered the house, and
sat down in the professor's study, where the old gentleman (who had been
the first to meet Cornelia) sat enclouding himself with smoke, but
betraying no other symptom of his huge delight.

"But how came you to get here so soon, you dear darling?" said Sophie,
looking with lighted eyes at her sister. "We thought it would be a week
at least."

"Oh, bless your heart, I couldn't wait, you know. So awfully tired I got
of seeing new things and people. Dear me!"--and Cornelia threw herself
back in her chair and uplifted her gloved hands in a little gesture of
ineffability--"you would never imagine what a bore society is, after
all."

The professor, from his cloud, cast, unobserved, a glance of quiet
scrutiny at his daughter. A certain jaunty embroidery of tone and manner
struck him at once--she wasn't quite the same simple little woman who
had gone to New York two months ago. Well, well, they would wear off,
perhaps, these little affectations; and then, too, it was not to be
expected of her that she'd be a girl all her life. They all must needs
pass through this stage to something better--or worse: all women of pith
and passion like Cornelia.

"How did you leave Aunt Margaret?" inquired he.

"Oh, _désolée_, because I would go away," replied Cornelia, with a very
pretty laugh. "She vowed she could have spared me much better six weeks
earlier; for, you see, after I'd learned the ropes, and how to take care
of myself, I became, as she expressed it, 'such a dear, sweet,
_invaluable_ little _attachée_.'"

Sophie laughed at the comical air with which her sister repeated the
sentence; yet, when her laugh was gone, there remained a slight shadow
of disappointment. She, too, was unwillingly aware of some alteration.

"Is she such a grand lady as you expected?" asked she.

"Oh, my dear, grandeur's a humbug, let me tell you. Gracious! by the
time I'd been there a week, I could put it on as well as anybody. Aunt
Margaret, she was no end of a swell, and all that; but, as for
grandeur!--And she was such an odd old thing. Sometimes I seemed to like
her, and sometimes she almost made me faint. Once in a while I thought
she was trying to pump me about something; though, to be sure, there was
nothing in me to be pumped. I told her about Abbie, for one thing, as
much as I knew, and she seemed awfully interested--it was put on, I
suppose, very likely; and yet she really did seem to mean it. I remember
she couldn't get over my forgetting Abbie's last name: she even told me
to mention it the first time I wrote to her. So queer of the old
person."

"No necessity for you to write, my dear," observed the professor at this
point. "I've been intending to do it myself for some time, and I'll
thank her for her hospitality, and so forth."

Cornelia nodded, yawned, and then allowed her eyes to wander around the
room.

"How nice and cozy and home-like every thing does look! And so small.
Why, I should almost believe I was looking through the small end of the
telescope, or something."

"New York houses are so big, I suppose?" said Sophie.

"Gracious, dear!" exclaimed Cornelia, laughing again. "Why, the very
cupboards are bigger than this whole house. It'll take me ever so long
to get over being afraid to knock my head against something when I stand
up."

"You can sit out-doors until the weather gets too cold," observed the
professor. "The sky is as high here as in New York, isn't it?"

Cornelia ignored this remark with admirable self-poise. "Aunt Margaret
was asking a good deal about Mr. Bressant, too," said she. "She said
she'd only heard about him from you, papa; but I thought, sometimes, she
must be fibbing. Once in a while, you know, she acted just as if she had
forgotten having said she didn't know him. However, that's absurd, of
course. By-the-way, where is he? Here still?"

"Oh, yes. O Neelie dear, I have such news to tell you. But--yes, he's
out there by the fountain, I believe. Go out and speak to him, and then
come up to my room and hear the secret."

"All right, I'll be there directly;" and, springing from her chair with
a sudden overflow of animal spirits, drowning out the small growth of
affectation, the beautiful woman danced out upon the balcony, and down
the steps. Sophie went to her chamber, and the professor remained in his
study to indulge his own thoughts, which, by the way, appeared to be
neither light nor agreeable.

As Cornelia neared the fountain, her steps grew more staid. The
clustering shrubbery hid Bressant from sight until she was close upon
him. She thought, perhaps, in the few moments that passed as she walked
down the path, of that other time when she had picked her way, in his
company, between the rain-besprinkled shrubs. Here was the same tea-rose
bush, and hardly a flower left upon it. Yes, here was one, full-blown,
to be sure, and ready to fall to pieces; but still, perhaps he would
smile and remember when he saw it in her bosom; or perhaps--and Cornelia
smiled secretly to herself at the thought--perhaps he needed no
reminder. He was sitting by the fountain now. What more likely than that
he was thinking over that first strange scene that had been enacted
between them there? Dear fellow! how he would start and redden with
pleasure when he saw her appear, in flesh and blood, in the midst of his
reverie! Cornelia blushed; but some of the loose petals of the overblown
rose in her bosom became detached, and floated earthward.

All at once her heart began to beat so as to incommode her: she was
uncertain whether she was pale or red. It seemed to require all her
courage to get over the last few steps of garden-path that brought her
into view. What was it? A premonition? Now she saw him, as he sat with
his legs crossed, his head resting on his hand, turned away from her,
staring moodily before him.

He did not look up until Cornelia stood almost beside him; then, become
aware of her presence, he leaped suddenly to his feet, and towered
before her, one hand grasping the fantastically-curved limb which
ornamented the back of the rustic seat.

In the space that intervened while Cornelia, startled at his abrupt
movement, remained motionless in front of him, the piece of branch which
his hand held parted with a sharp crack. It broke the pause, and
Cornelia laughed.

"You seem to be recovering your strength pretty well, if you can break
the limb of a tree short off just by laying your hand upon it! How do
you do? Aren't you glad to see me?" and she held out her hand with a
frankness not all real, for she felt a secret misgiving, and an
undefined fear.

But the strain of Bressant's suspense was removed. He concluded that
either Cornelia had as yet heard nothing of his bond with Sophie, or
that, having heard it, it had not seriously affected her. Of the two
suppositions he was inclined to the first (and correct) one; but he kept
scanning her face with an uneasy curiosity. He took her hand, shook it,
and dropped it.

"How do you do?" said he.

They took their places side by side upon the bench. Cornelia felt a
great weight pressing heavily and more heavily upon her, crushing out
life and vivacity. This was not what she had expected; what did it
mean? was it indifference? was it aversion? could it--could it be an
uncouth way of showing joy? Poor Cornelia held her clasped hands in her
lap, and knew not what to say.

When the silence had lasted so long that in another moment she must have
screamed, she chanced to remember the watch. It was ticking steadily in
her belt. She dragged it out, her hands feeling stiff and numb, and then
commanding herself by a not inconsiderable effort to speak naturally,
she put it in his hand, which he opened mechanically to receive it.

"Here it is, all safe. You can't think how punctual I've learned to be
since I've had it. I got to be quite superstitious about winding it up;
but it did run down once--just about six weeks after I left. It was in
the forenoon, about eleven. I--I happened to be looking at it at the
time, and suddenly the second-hand began to go slower and slower, and at
last it stopped. You can't think how frightened I was. I couldn't help
thinking that something must have happened at home. I wrote to Sophie
that I would come home the same afternoon. Of course you know"--here
Cornelia interrupted the hurried and nervous flow of her words to force
a laugh--"of course it wasn't any thing but that I'd been up late
talking with Aunt Margaret, and had forgotten to wind it. It isn't out
of order or any thing."

She was out of breath now, and had to pause. She would gladly have kept
on indefinitely, for the sake of avoiding another of those dreadful
silences.

Bressant was not in the habit of paying much attention to coincidences,
but it happened to occur to him that the stoppage of the watch must have
taken place pretty nearly, if not exactly, at the time of his engagement
to Sophie, and the thought rendered his discomposure still more painful.

"Won't you keep the watch?" said he at length.

"Keep it?" repeated Cornelia, timidly, uncertain what might be coming
nest. Her breath went and came unevenly. "How can I keep it?" faltered
she. "They know--papa and Sophie know--that I haven't any such watch.
I--I have no right to keep it."

She could hardly have spoken more plainly; indeed, she had been
surprised into speaking much more plainly than she intended. The moment
after her pride rebuked her, and made her cheeks burn with shame; and a
feeling of anger at having so betrayed herself put a sparkle into her
eyes. Bressant, looking at her, was stricken by the angry glow of her
beauty. It began to dazzle his reason, and bind his will. Their eyes met
fully for a moment; a world of fatal significance can sometimes be
conveyed by a glance. The extremity of his danger perhaps aroused the
young man to a realization of it. He stood up, and pressed one hand over
his eyes.

"If you've no right to keep the watch, I've no right to give it you, I
suppose," said he, sullenly.

"I owe you an apology, certainly, Mr. Bressant," exclaimed Cornelia,
interrupting what more he might have been going to say. She was tingling
to her fingertips with the intolerable anger of a woman who finds
herself rejected and befooled. "Really, I am surprised at myself for
persecuting you so relentlessly. Not satisfied with depriving you of
your timepiece for two whole months, I actually am unable to surrender
my--my ill-gotten booty without giving you an uncomfortable feeling that
I want to task your beneficence further yet. Well, I've not a word to
say for myself. I had no grudge to pay. I'm sure your conduct to me has
always been--most unexceptionably polite! The most charitable
explanation is, that I was crazy. I hope you'll consent to accept it;
and I do assure you that I'm perfectly sane now, and mean to keep so.
You needn't," she continued laughing, "you really needn't be afraid of
my persecutions any longer. I'm going to be as circumspect as--as you
are. Now, good-by for the present." She held out her hand with an air of
formal courtesy. "I promised Sophie I'd be back directly. I'll see you
at dinner, I suppose?"

As she came to the good-by, Cornelia had risen from her seat; by the
action the remaining petals of the tea-rose had been shaken off, leaving
the nucleus bare and unprotected. Bressant's eyes fastened idly upon it,
but he said nothing, and did not move, Cornelia withdrew her unaccepted
hand, smiled, and, turning about, walked up the path to the house with
an easy and dignified grace, which was not so much natural as the
inspired result of passion.

Bressant looked down at the watch in his hand, and saw it marking the
hour at which a dark epoch in his life began. He knelt on one knee by
the basin of the fountain--but not to pray. Grasping in one hand the
guard-chain of his watch, he dashed the watch itself two or three times
against the stone basin-rim. When it was completely shattered, he tossed
it into the water, and then rose lightly to his feet.

CHAPTER XXI.

PUTTING ON THE ARMOR.

Sophie, in her room, was moving about hither and thither, ostensibly to
put things in order, but really to make the time before her sister's
appearance pass the easier. She was little given to the manifestation of
impatience; but now, so much did she long to pour out her heart to her
sister on the subject of her love; to speak with a freedom which she
could use to no one else--not even to Bressant himself--and to receive
the full and satisfying measure of sympathy which she felt that only
Cornelia could give her--dear, loving, joyous Cornelia!--so much did all
these things press upon her, that she found waiting a very tedious
affair.

At last she heard Cornelia's step along the hall, and up the staircase.
It sounded more slow and listless than a few minutes before, as if she
were treading under the weight of a weary load. Now that she was out of
Bressant's eyeshot, the support afforded by her anger had given way, and
she felt very tired, very reckless, and rather grim. She entered
Sophie's open door, crossed the room heavily, and, with scarcely a
glance at her sister, threw herself plump into the chair by the window.

"Poor child," thought Sophie; "she's so tired with that long journey;
but she'll be refreshed by what I have to tell her."

"I'm so glad you're here," she continued, aloud. "I've never wanted any
one so much,-especially since the last two weeks. A great happiness has
come to me, dear, but I haven't been able fully to enjoy it, because I
couldn't tell you--they didn't want me to write. But I wouldn't tell any
one before you, nor let any one tell you but me, because I wanted to
enjoy your enjoyment all myself."

Sophie had sat down at Cornelia's feet, upon a little wooden cricket
which stood in the window, and had taken one of her hands in both of
hers. Cornelia glanced down at her somewhat indifferently; she had
scarcely attended to what her sister had been saying. But the fathomless
expression of happiness upon Sophie's uplifted face struck through her
gloom and pain. She had never seen any thing like it before, and
probably at no moment of her life had Sophie's earthly content been so
complete.

"I am engaged to be married," said she, a rose-colored flush spreading
over her cheeks. She delayed lovingly over the words--they were dear,
because they expressed such a world of happiness.

Cornelia repeated the words stupidly. She felt as if she were rooted
beneath a rock, which was about to fall and crush her. Yet, resolutely
shutting her eyes to what she knew must come--to gain an instant's time
to breathe and brace herself--she asked, with an air of vivacious
interest, bending down, and studying Sophie's face the while--

"Engaged, did you say? To whom, dear?"

"Why, to Mr. Bressant. Who else could it be?"

Sophie spoke in a soft tone of gentle surprise, but the words rang in
Cornelia's brain as if they had been fired from a cannon. She closed her
eyes, and leaned back in her chair. The strings of her hat choked
her--she tore them apart, and the hat fell from her nerveless hand to
the floor. She strove to open her eyes and command herself, but her
sight was blurred and darkened, and her head dizzy.

In a minute or two, however, she recovered herself sufficiently to be
aware that Sophie was alarmed about her. The imperative necessity not to
betray herself gave her a brief and superficial control. Her mind was in
confusion, and it was, perhaps, for this reason--because she could not
collect her faculties and analyze the situation--that she was enabled to
feel a gush of the natural, tender love for her sister--a joy in her
joy. Knowing that such a mood could not last long, she hastened to make
it available: she bent down, and put her arms around Sophie's neck.

"I'm so glad, darling! so happy! How splendid! isn't it? What a perfect
match! Ah, Sophie, I sympathize with you with all my heart. I couldn't
have wished you any thing better."

This was doing very well. Her manner was a little exaggerated; her
speech was hurried, and almost mechanical. She avoided looking Sophie in
the face while the lies were coming out of her mouth (if they were real
lies, and not a bastard kind of truth, good while spoken, and the next
moment degenerating into falsehood). Notwithstanding these minor
defects, it was a very successful effort--excitement, and even vehement
emotion, were quite admissible in a warm-hearted girl who had her
sister's welfare nearly at heart, and much might be allowed to
surprise. Indeed, Sophie, though a good deal agitated, and even anxious,
was not in the least suspicious or dissatisfied. Such was the loyalty
and humility of her own nature, that much stronger grounds would have
failed to inspire misgivings.

"I thought you were going to be ill, at first," she remarked, with a
loving smile. "Perhaps I told you too abruptly--did I? You see, I
thought you half knew it already--at least, that you suspected it--and,
then, to tell the truth, dear," added she, with a bright smile in her
eyes, "I didn't think you'd care so much--be so _very_ glad, I mean.
There never was so sweet a sister as you."

Cornelia felt that this must not go on any longer. She could feel her
cheeks getting hot, and her eyes bright--very little more, and there
would be an outburst. She must leave the room at all hazards, and be by
herself.

She got up, and stood unsteadily, with her cold hand to her hot
forehead.

"I believe I _don't_ feel very well, Sophie. I think I must have a
little palpitation, or something. I've been awfully dissipated, and all
that, you know, with Aunt Margaret. I feel a little run down. Oh! it's
nothing serious. Don't tell papa! no--don't on any account. I'll just go
to my room, and lie down for half an hour. I shall be all right before
tea-time. You must tell me all the particulars afterward--not just this
moment. Don't mention any thing about me, you know, and don't let any
one come up. Good-by till supper, dear. _Au revoir_."

She got out of the room, not very gracefully, probably, but still she
escaped. A few hurried and uneven steps down the entry brought her to
her own door. She burst it open, entered, and locked it behind her in
feverish haste. Then, with a miserable sense of luxury, she flung
herself on the bed, and was alone.

Her first sensation, as soon as the tumult in her thoughts suffered her
to have any intelligent sensation at all, was one of secret pleasure and
relief. It was a surprise to herself--she even struggled against it, and
tried to convince herself that she was only miserable, but still the
sensation remained. Guilty or not, there it was, and she could not help
it. The news of Bressant's engagement to Sophie was a relief and a
pleasure to her.

The real pain--hard and bitter, and with no redeeming grain of
consolation--had been the unexpected and unexplained change in his
manner. She had met him, anticipating a tender and delicious renewal of
the relations on which they had parted--the memory of which had never
left her during her absence, and which had grown every day sweeter and
more precious in the recollection. His silence and coldness,
unaccompanied by any show of reasons, had penetrated her soul like iron.
It could only be that she had become distasteful to him, that what he
had said and done before her departure had been in a spirit of
deliberate trifling, or, at the best, that it had been a mistake, of
which he had been convinced during their separation, and now wished to
correct. The pride and resentment that were in her had risen up in
defence, and, had the matter rested there, might ultimately have gained
the victory.

But his engagement to Sophie--that was another story. In the first
place, if he loved her sister, it did not therefore follow that he
disliked her; quite the contrary. And, on the other hand, it readily
explained the restraint and embarrassment of his manner. How otherwise
could he have acted? Well--and was this all?

Ah! no--not all! There was a tawny light in Cornelia's eyes as she lay
upon the bed, flushed and dishevelled. She was thinking of a
moment--that one little moment--when their glances had met, and
penetrated to a fatal depth. For a time, the ensuing events had swept it
from her memory; but now it returned, charged with a deeper and darker
meaning than Cornelia at present cared to recognize. She was satisfied
that it gave her comfort. She hid her thought away, as a miser does his
gold: it was enough that it had existence, and could be used when the
fitting hour should come. She had not seen the little episode of the
watch; but that was, perhaps, scarcely necessary.

The intensity of the beautiful woman's reflections at length exhausted
her mind's power of maintaining them: she turned over on her side, and
began to follow with her eye the arabesques worked upon the white
counterpane. It was just the sort of occupation which suited her mood.
The arabesques were pretty and graceful; the counterpane was of
immaculate whiteness; there was just enough of effort in tracing out the
intricacies of the interlacements to give a gentle sensation of
pleasure; and there was the latent consciousness, behind this voluntary
trifling, that it could be exchanged at any moment for the most terribly
real and absorbing excitement.

At length it occurred to her that time was passing, and the hour for tea
must be near at hand. She sat up on the bed, threw off her light sack,
and unbuttoned her boots. Going to the glass, she saw that her hair was
in disorder, and partly fallen down, and that one cheek was stamped with
the creases of the pillow. She pulled off her gloves, and looked
critically at her hands.

"It'll never do to go down this way!" determined she. "I must make
myself decent."

In half an hour more she was finished, and took a parting peep at
herself in the mirror. Cold water and a soft sponge had taken from her
face all traces of travel and emotion. Her dark, crisp hair was arranged
in marvelous convolutions, and from the white tip of each ear, peeping
out beneath, hung an Etruscan gold ear-ring, given her by Aunt Margaret.
Her cheeks were pale, but not colorless; her eyes glowed like a tiger's.
She was dressed in a black demi-toilet, relieved with glimpses of yellow
here and there; an oblong piece cut out in front revealed, through
softened edges of lace, the clear, smooth flesh of the neck and bosom.
The dream of a perfume hovered about her, and touched the air as she
moved. Her wide sleeve fell open, as she raised her arm, disclosing the
white curves, which were remarkably full and firm for one of her age.

She gave a little laugh as she stood there that made the ear-rings
quiver, and parted her lips enough to show that her small white teeth
were set edge to edge.

"It can't do any harm," was passing through her mind. "If I'm to be his
sister, he ought to like me. It's no use making him detest me. If he
loves Sophie so much, what harm can it do for him to be pleased with my
beauty? Besides, haven't I a right to my own good looks?"

She kissed her fingers to her reflection, and made a deep courtesy. As
she did so, she caught sight of the little petal-less rose-stalk which
had fallen out of her traveling-dress on to the floor. She picked it up,
and, after turning it idly in her fingers for a moment, she yielded to a
sudden fancy, and fastened it into the bosom of her dress; so that this
symbol of a body from which the soul had departed formed the central and
crowning ornament of the voluptuous and lovely woman.

"There!" ejaculated she, with a smile which did not part her lips, but
seemed to draw her dark eyebrows a little closer together.

"Strange I'm so quiet!" she mused, as she walked slowly to the door.
"What an ordeal I have to go through! I must sit down with Sophie, and
papa, and--him: listen to all the particulars, ask all the proper and
necessary questions, smile and laugh; and it would be well, I suppose,
to rally the lovers archly on the ardor of their affection, and the
suddenness of the consummation. Better still, I can laughingly allude to
my own prior claim--suggest that I feel hurt at being distanced and left
out in the cold by that demure little younger sister of mine! Oh, yes!"
exclaimed Cornelia, clapping her hands together, "that will cap the
climax; what fun!"

Here the tea-bell rang. Cornelia put her hand on the door-handle.

"Of course, nobody could help loving Sophie--such a dear, simple, good
little thing! and why not he as well as any one else? and, of course, in
that case, Sophie must think that she loved him back--thought it her
duty, too, perhaps! Nobody was to blame."

"But he was mine first!" she whispered to her heart, again and again,
and she found a disastrous solace in each repetition. She flung open the
door, and ran down-stairs with a light step, a smiling face, and a
fierce, tight heart.

CHAPTER XXII.

LOCKED UP.

Bressant's health was now sufficiently established to warrant his moving
back to Abbie's. Not that he was particularly anxious to go, but he had
no pretext for staying, and his engagement to Sophie was a reason in
etiquette why he should not. Accordingly, about a week after Cornelia's
arrival, such of his books and other property as had been sent to him
from the boarding-house were packed in a box, which was hoisted in to
the back of the wagon; he and Professor Valeyon mounted the seat, and,
with Dolly between the shafts, they set out for the village.

"I suppose you remember a talk I had with you the first evening you came
here?" said the old gentleman, as they turned the corner in the road.
"Told you it would be work enough for a churchful of missionaries to
make any thing out of you, in the way of a minister, and so on?"

"Very well; I remember the whole conversation," said Bressant, pushing
up his beard into his mouth and biting it.

"Thanks to God--I can't take any credit to myself--you've been more
changed than I ever expected to see you. You've found your heart and how
to use it. That goes further toward fitting you for the ministry than
all the divinity-books ever printed."

Bressant's hankering after the ministerial life was not so strong as it
once had been; but he said nothing.

"You'll need means of support when you're married," resumed the
professor. "A few months' hard study will qualify you to take charge of
a parish. The next parish to this will be vacant before next spring. If
I apply for it now, I may be able to give it you, with your wife, as a
New-Year's gift."

"I thought of getting a place in New York. What could I do in a country
parish?"

"Expensive, living in New York!" said the professor, with a glance of
quiet scrutiny at his companion's profile. "Marriage won't be a good
pecuniary investment for you, remember. Better begin safe. The village
salary will be good enough."

Bressant communed with himself in silence a few moments, before
replying:

"As my father's will stands, Mrs. Vanderplanck--I believe he owed some
obligation or other to her--receives half the fortune, and I the other
half. Are you certain that my marriage, and the disclosure it would
bring about, will forfeit the whole of it?"

Professor Valeyon touched Dolly with the whip, and turned inward his
white-bearded lips.

"All I can tell you about it," said he, "is this: when your mother
married your father, all her property was settled upon her; so that it
was only the event of her death, intestate, that could have given your
father the right to will it away at all."

At this information, Bressant folded his arms, and, looking steadfastly
before him, said not a word. A silence followed between the two, which
lasted over half a mile. Dolly seemed to be in a meditative humor,
likewise; she whisked her tail with an absorbed air, and once in a while
shook her ears, or wagged her head, as though accepting or rejecting
some hypothesis or proposition. Most likely, her problems found their
solution in the manger that afternoon; but those of the professor and
his companion received neither so early nor so satisfactory a
settlement.

When they had entered upon the willow-stretch, where the trees had
already scattered upon the ground their first tribute of narrow golden
leaves, the younger man came to the end of his meditations, straightened
himself in his seat, and spoke:

"Let it be as you said about the country parish; if you can get it for
me, I'll be ready for it."

Professor Valeyon's face, which had been somewhat overcast, cleared
beautifully; he appealed to Dolly's sympathies with a flick of the whip,
to which she responded with a knowing shake of the head, and a
refreshing increase of speed.

"That's well, my dear boy," said he. "I respect you."

"I'm not the only one concerned," continued Bressant, who still sat in
the same position, with folded arms; "it involves about as much for Mrs.
Vanderplanck as for me. I shall have to consider that point, and attend
to it first of all."

"To tell you the truth," returned Professor Valeyon, with an emphatic
deliberation of manner, "I don't think you can give her any information
that she's not possessed of already. She knows as much as you do, that's
certain. You'll do well to begin business nearer home than at Mrs.
Vanderplanck's."

Bressant lifted one hand to his beard, which he twisted about
unmercifully. "It's only since Cornelia came back that you have thought
that," he said, at length, with sudden keenness.

The old gentleman nodded, and met steadily the rapid glance which the
other gave him.

"At all events," the latter resumed presently, "she don't know that I
know, and she don't know what I intend. It's not a pleasant business,
altogether--understand? You know how I've been brought up. It isn't so
easy for me to fall into the right sentiments as it might be for other
men. And--I feel it to be a private matter; I ought to go about it
alone, and in my own way. Now"--here he turned around, and changed his
tone, watching the professor's countenance as he spoke, "are you willing
to leave it entirely in my hands?--promise not to question me, nor to
speak to me, nor to anybody else, until it's all settled?"

"More than willing, my dear boy! more than satisfied; you shall have a
clear field, that's certain. I sha'n't do any thing--sha'n't say a word,
meanwhile; shall wait with perfect confidence till you're ready to
report, whenever and however you please."

"I should like to make you a present on my wedding-day, in return for
the parish, you know. Will that be soon enough?" and the young man met
the elder's eye with a sharp look of significance.

"No more fitting time, no more fitting time," replied Professor Valeyon.
The old gentleman's heart was full; he shifted the reins to his right
hand, and laid his left upon Bressant's, which he pressed with much
feeling. Perhaps it was of bad omen thus to seal a bargain with the left
hand, but no misgivings of the sort troubled the professor. He felt more
at ease than at any time since his pupil first sprang up the steps of
the Parsonage-porch.

But Bressant, if he were a child in the world of the affections, was, in
other respects, a man of exceptional shrewdness and comprehensive
ability. Although he had never as yet turned his attention to business
matters, he had every faculty and instinct required to make a successful
business-man. When he found his own interests deeply at stake, he may
have had more than one motive for wishing to secure to himself a clear
field. But Professor Valeyon was still as simple-hearted a soul--as
quick to trust wherever his sympathies dictated--as ever in his younger
days.

Bressant did not intend to deceive him, but then he had no irrevocably
settled plans. He was not one of those who follow blindfold the
promptings of any principle, simply because it chances to be a lofty
one. Although passionate, and hot of blood, he could believe that the
greatest good might be made not inconsistent with the greatest comfort.
He undoubtedly intended to do what honor, generosity, and his future
father-in-law, urged him to do; but it was less from an abstract love of
virtue, than from an overmastering unwillingness to give up Sophie (his
affection for whom was the most deeply-seated necessity of his nature--a
fact which must be borne in mind through all that follows), and
also--this was likewise a consideration of the greatest weight; indeed,
Sophie alone counted for more--also, from a very confident conviction
that, after every thing had been accomplished, according to the highest
dictates of truth, and justice, and all that--he would not, to all
intents and purposes, lose his fortune after all; that, whatever might
be the legal disposition of it, all the enjoyments and benefits that it
could confer would still be his, with the additional grace of having
acted in a most lofty and self-sacrificing spirit; that, in short, and
to use a homely illustration, he would be able to give away his cake and
eat it too.

After being safely landed at the boarding-house--Abbie was not at home
at the moment--Bressant bade farewell to the professor, and, assisted by
the fat Irish servant-girl, carried his box up to his room. It was
neatly swept, dusted, and put in order; a bunch of fresh flowers upon
the table; others, in pots, upon the window-sill. Their fragrance gave a
delicate tone to the atmosphere of the room, and perhaps penetrated more
nearly to Bressant's heart than an hour full of unanswerable arguments
and exhortations. He turned to the fat servant, who stood smiling, and
wiping her hands on her apron.

"Who brought these flowers? Who arranged them here?"

"Sure, and wasn't it Abbie herself!" replied the functionary, giving her
mistress her Christian name, with true democratic freedom. "More than
that; isn't it herself has swept out the room every week, let alone
dusting of it every day of her life! which is not mentioning that the
flowers has been exchanged every day likewise, and fresh put in place of
them, by reason that the old shouldn't fade; which is a fact
unprecedented, and unbeknown in my experience, which have been in this
house nine year come St. Patrick's day--God bless him!"

Having thus delivered herself of what had evidently been weighing on her
mind for weeks past, the fat servant-girl stopped wiping her hands on
her apron (without help of which praiseworthy act she could no more have
talked, than a donkey with a heavy stone tied to his tail can bray), and
turning herself about, waddled toward the door. Bressant hesitated a
moment, passed his hand rapidly down over his face and beard, and then,
catching open the door just as the fat servant-girl was closing it, he
requested her to inform Abbie, when she came back, of his return, and
tell her he would like to speak with her.

"I'll do it, sir; rest easy," was the encouraging reply. "Faith, and
it's a handsome man he is, and a sweet, lovely look he has out of his
eyes; leastways now, which is, maybe, more than could be said when first
he came here, three months ago, and looked that cold and sharp at a body
as might make one shiver like. It's likely his being going to marry Miss
Sophie up to the Parsonage as has fetched a change in him; which, she's
a dear good girl; and may they be happy--God bless the both of them!"
Thus soliloquizing, the fat servant-girl, apron in hand, descended the
narrow stairs, and betook herself to the kitchen.

Bressant paced restlessly up and down his small room, stopping every
minute or so to bend over the flower-pots in the window, or take a sniff
from the bouquet on the table. His cheeks and forehead were flushed, and
his eyes very brilliant. His lips worked incessantly against one
another, and he held his hands now clasped behind his back, now thrust
into the pockets of his coat. But there was certainly a noble and a
gentle light upon his features, different from their usual expression of
dazzling intellectual efficiency, different from the passionate fire
which Cornelia's presence had more than once caused to flicker over
them, different even from the purer and deeper illumination which his
love for Sophie sometimes kindled within him. A virtuous act stirs the
soul by its own innate beauty, even when the motive is not all
unselfish. It was probably the first time that precisely such a look had
ever visited Bressant's face; and it was certainly a great pity that no
one but a fat Irish servant-girl should have had the privilege of
beholding it there.

Presently, as he stood facing the door, he saw the latch lifted. The
moment had come. Involuntarily he caught hold of the back of the chair,
and drew in his breath.

Pshaw! only the fat servant again. Bressant bit his lip, stamped his
foot upon the floor, and frowned.

The fat girl met these demonstrations with a fat smile, and extended to
the young man a long, narrow envelop, laid crossways over the dirty palm
of her large, thick hand.

"A letter!" exclaimed she, resuming her apron as soon as her hand was at
liberty. "A letter from New York I'm thinking it is; and sure the
handwriting's a lady's, every bit of it; which I don't know what Miss
Sophie would be after saying if she should hear of it--nay, don't fear
me, sir, that I'd ever have the heart to be telling her of it! And it's
Abbie as fetched it, and the same bid me tell you as how she'd be after
coming up here directly; she'll be cleaning her face first, and
removing her bonnet; which she's always a right neat body, and it's
myself can testify, as has lived with her nine years, and never had
cause to complain, God bless her!"

When Bressant was alone, he sat down in the chair, with the letter
between his fingers. On such slight hinges do our destinies turn. If
Abbie had neglected to call at the post-office, or if she had been
satisfied to give the letter to the young man herself, instead of
sending it to him five minutes beforehand, or if the writing of the
letter had been delayed a few hours (how many _ifs_ there always are in
such cases!), Bressant would have had a far different fate, and this
story would never have been written. But as it was, five fatal minutes
intervened between the delivery of the letter and Abbie's appearance,
during which time he had read it through twice--at first hurriedly, the
second time slowly and carefully--had replaced it in the envelop, and
put the envelop in his pocket. Then he sat quite quiet, leaning back in
his chair, his head thrown forward, his under eyelids drawn up, and
contracted around the piercing glance of his eves, his jaws and lips set
tight, and a straight line up his forehead from between his eyebrows. A
more unpleasant and forbidding expression one does not often meet; but,
such as it was, it grew still more stern and unpromising when the door
once more slowly opened, and Abbie appeared upon the threshold.

Nevertheless, he at once rose, and inclined forward his lofty shoulders
in a remarkably courteous bow. Abbie, who showed some traces of
discomposure, and held one finger nervously to her under lip, stepped
into the room, and they shook hands.

"I'm glad to welcome you back," said she, apparently unable to remove
her eyes from his face. "You'll not likely find this place as convenient
as the Parsonage, though."

"It's very pleasant; these flowers are delightful. I wanted to thank you
for them; it seems like home to be here."

"Like home!" repeated Abbie. Her body seemed to bend and sway toward
him, and the outer extremity of the eyebrows drooped a little, giving a
singularly soft and gentle expression to her elderly visage. But seeing
that he only colored, turning his head aside, and fumbling with his
beard, her expression changed into one of constraint, which appeared to
stiffen on her features.

"I'm glad you like the flowers; I didn't know as you cared for such
things. I thought if you were ill they might be pleasant to you. But
you're looking very well, sir, for one who has had so severe an
accident."

"Oh, yes; I'm as well as ever. I've had very good nursing."

"Yes--yes," she said, slowly; "it was better you should be there; you
couldn't have been so well cared for here. I told Professor Valeyon so
at the time. I knew you'd feel happier there--more at home. It's all for
the best--all for the best, in the end." She rattled the keys in her
girdle before proceeding, with a distraught, embarrassed manner:
"By-the-way, you had something more than good nursing to help you to
health, I heard. Is it Cornelia--or Sophie?"

Bressant hesitated and stammered--a weakness he seldom was guilty of,
especially when there was so little reason for it as at present.

"It's--I'm--oh!--Sophie!" said he.

"I heard it was Sophie, but I thought likely as not it was a mistake of
one for another. Sophie," repeated she, musingly, "that sweet, delicate
little angel. Oh, I should fear, I should fear! Cornelia would have been
better--not so sensitive--she can bear more--and who knows?--No; but I
do him wrong; he loves her: she'll be happy; she can't help it!"

Here Abbie became aware that she had been thinking aloud; her hand
sought her mouth, and she glanced apprehensively at Bressant. But he had
evidently heard nothing of the latter part of her speech, which was
spoken in a low tone. He had taken a flower from the bunch on the table,
and was pulling it ruthlessly to pieces. He did not look up. Abbie,
rattling her keys, retired toward the door.

"I'll bid you good-morning, sir. A house-keeper always must be busy, you
know; and, of course, you can't afford to be disturbed. You need never
fear any disturbance from me--never, I assure you. By-the-way, you
received your letter? I gave it to the servant, instead of waiting to
bring it myself, because I thought it might be important."

"Oh, yes, I have it; no--no importance at all. Good-morning."

Abbie walked hurriedly and unevenly to her room, shut herself in, and
fastened the door. She sat down on a chair which stood by the
old-fashioned desk in the corner, and it seemed to her she could not
rise from it again. A faintness was upon her, which she thought might,
perhaps, be death. There was a sensation within her as if a clock had
run down in her head, and had dropped the heavy weight into her heart.
She could feel the paleness of her face, and the drops of moisture on
her forehead. Her breathing was wellnigh imperceptible. She sat quite,
still, in a kind of awful expectation, as if listening for the echoless
footfall of Death. But he passed by on the other side, and left her to
face her life again.

She felt rather tired of it, as she sat up and looked dimly around her.
Putting her hand in the pocket of her dark dress, she drew out the small
square morocco case which contained the daguerreotype. It was rather
mortifying, certainly: every one knows what it is to appear, dressed for
a party, and find you have mistaken the night. In what pleasant little
episode had Abbie flattered herself that this portrait, with its grave,
dark, baby eyes, its soft, light curls, its slender, solemn little face,
might be going to play a part? No matter: the hope was gone by; and
every day the portrait faded more and more indistinguishably into the
dark background. Abbie looked at it a moment or two only, then closed
the case, and carefully fastened the two little hooks which kept it
shut. Opening the old-fashioned desk, she put the daguerreotype in its
little drawer, and locked it up. She held the key--a small brass
key--between her finger and thumb, meditating. Presently she went to the
window, opened it, and looked out. Beneath, a little to one side, stood
a huge black water-butt, half buried in the earth, and partly full of
rain-water, contributed by the tin spout whose mouth opened above it.
Into this butt Abbie dropped the key. It struck the water with a faint
pat, and disappeared, causing two or three circles to expand to the
edges of the butt, against which they disappeared also.

She did not immediately draw back, but remained leaning with her arms
upon the window-sill. It was a beautiful, cool, September morning, such
as makes breathing and eyesight luxurious. The fat Irish girl sat on the
back steps, peeling potatoes for dinner. On the step by her side was a
large earthen bowl, into which she put the potatoes, while throwing the
skins into the swill-pail on her right. She was obliged to give her
whole mind to the operation, there being a danger lest, in rapid
working, she should happen to throw the potato into the swill-pail, and
put the skin into the earthen bowl. She was much too absorbed to notice
the beautiful weather, even had she been inclined to do so; but it
remained beautiful, nevertheless.

"I'd be a fool to find fault with him," said Abbie to herself. "How can
I expect him to see any thing in me, more than I can see myself in the
looking-glass? And then, he loves Sophie, and perhaps he thinks I'd rob
her; the Lord knows I only coveted the luxury of giving away my own, and
seeing them happy with it. Well, he may set his mind at rest; he shall
never suffer the mortification of having to thank a boarding-house
keeper for his fortune.

"O my boy--my dear, dear boy!"

Meanwhile Bressant, having been relieved, by the timely arrival of the
letter, from any present necessity of visiting his aunt, was devoting
himself pretty diligently to the cultivation of that line in his
forehead running perpendicularly up from between the eyebrows. It bade
fair to become a permanent feature in his face.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ARMED NEUTRALITY.

One afternoon in the cool heart of October, Cornelia and Sophie found
themselves on the hill which rose up in front of the house, above the
road, bound on a hunt for autumn leaves. They were alone. Bressant's
time for coming was still an hour distant. A few nights before there had
been a frost, which had inspired a rainbow soul into the woods; and the
glory of the golden and crimson leaves made it imperatively necessary
that they should be gathered and allowed to illuminate the dusky
interior of the Parsonage.

Since Cornelia's return home, the sisters had not been so much together
as formerly. Sophie had observed it, and secretly blamed herself: she
allowed Bressant to monopolize her--left Cornelia out in the cold--was
selfish and thoughtless just because she was happy--and so forth: taking
herself severely to task, and resolving to amend her behavior forthwith.
But there seemed to be some difficulty in the way of consummating her
best intentions.

Cornelia was no longer so easily to be come at; she did not volunteer
herself now in the liberal, joyous way she used to do; did not, in fact,
appear half so ready to do her share in the work of reconstruction. It
began to force itself upon Sophie that the edifice of their former
relations was not lightly to be rebuilt; and the growth of this
conviction occasioned her to mar her ordinarily serene and justly
harmonized existence with sundry little fits of crying and other
mournful indulgences.

As for Cornelia, if she noticed the estrangement at all, she did not
allow it to occasion her any anxiety. Jealousy and discontent are more
self-absorbing passions than love, and they closed her eyes to whatever
they did not involve. Yet the effect of the estrangement was more
hurtful upon her than upon Sophie; for never had her pure-minded
sister's influence been so needful to her as now, when the very nature
of the malady forbade its being so relieved.

But this afternoon it had so happened that they found themselves
together, on the hill. Each had filled a basket with the most brilliant,
or harmonious, or vividly contrasted colors they could find. They had
emerged from the wood into the clear autumn sunshine which rested upon
the hill-side, and sat down upon a gray knee of rock, encased with crisp
gray and black lichens. Below lay the Parsonage, with its
weather-blackened, shingled roof, and the garden, full of shrubbery,
intersected by winding paths, the fountain in the centre. The stony road
wound around the spur of the hill, and was visible here and there, in
its slopes and turnings on the way to the village, light buff between
the many-colored bordering of foliage. The winding valley looked like
Nature's color-box; the tall hills beyond, sleeping beneath their
Persian shawls, contrasted richly with the cool pearl-gray of the lower
sky behind them. Away to the right, though seemingly nearer than from
the road below, rose the white steeple of the meeting-house, and,
peeping out around it, the roofs and gable-ends of the village houses.

"There could not be a more lovely place to be happy in!" said Sophie,
sighing from excess of pleasure.

"Any place is as lovely as another when you're in love, I suppose,"
remarked her sister; "that is, if being in love is as nice as poets say
it is."

Sophie looked around with a smile, implying that the best description a
poet ever wrote could give but a faint impression of the reality.

"But," pursued Cornelia, "don't you find it very stupid when he's away?
The happier you are with him, the unhappier you'd be without him, I
should think."

"Oh, no, dear!" returned Sophie. "I'm happy mostly, because I know he
cares for me more than for any one else in the world, and because I know
he's one of the best and truest of men. I can feel that, you know, just
as much when he's at Abbie's, as when he's here. The happiness of love
isn't all in seeing and hearing, and--all that tangible part."

"Don't it make any difference, then, if you never Bee one another from
the day you're engaged until you're married?"

Sophie began to blush, as she generally did when called upon to speak of
her love. "Of course, it's delicious to be together," said she, "and it
would be very sad if we could not meet. But it would be more sad to
think that our love depended on meeting."

"Well, it may be so to you," returned Cornelia, picking lichens from the
rock and crushing them between her rounded fingers; "but my idea is that
the whole object of being engaged and married is to be together all the
time. I don't see what on earth we are made visible and tangible for,
unless to be seen and touched by the persons we love."

Sophie looked distressed, and a little embarrassed.

"You can't think our bodies are the most important part of us, Neelie,
dear? It's our souls that love and are loved, you know. How could we
love in heaven if it were not so?"

"Oh, I don't know any thing about that. It's love in this world I'm
speaking of. I believe it has as much to do with flesh and blood, as an
instrument has with the music that it makes. What would become of the
music if it wasn't for the instrument?"

"That's a beautiful illustration, my dear," observed Sophie, after a
thoughtful pause, "but I think it can be used better the other way. The
music of love, like other music, is an existence by itself, exclusive of
the flesh-and-blood instruments, which weren't given us to create music,
but to interpret it to our earthly senses. Our souls are the players;
but in the next world we shall be able to perceive the harmony without
need of any medium. We can remember music, too, and enjoy it, long after
we have heard it--that is why we don't need to be always together. And
yet it's always sweet to meet, to hear a new tune; and the number of
tunes is infinite; so love needs all eternity to make itself complete."

When Sophie hit upon an idea which seemed to her spiritually beautiful
and harmonious, she was apt to be carried away--sometimes, perhaps, into
deep water. Yet thus, occasionally, did she catch glimpses of higher
truths than a broader and safer wisdom could have attained. Cornelia
took one of the glowing leaves out of her basket, and looked at it.
Perhaps she saw, in the perfect earthly self-sufficiency of its
splendor, something akin to herself.

"I suppose I don't half appreciate your theory, Sophie, though it's
certainly pretty enough. But you're more soul than body, to begin with,
I believe. For my part, I almost think, sometimes, I could get along
without any soul at all, and never feel the least inconvenience. Perhaps
everybody hasn't a soul--only a few favored ones."

"What is it gives you such thoughts, Neelie?" said her sister, in a tone
which, had it not been charged with so ranch depth of feeling, would
have been plaintive. Her gray, profound eyes, from a slight slanting
upward of the brows above them, took on an expression in harmony with
her tone. "I never knew you to have such, until lately."

"I suppose, until lately, I didn't have any thoughts at all." There was
a pause. Sophie looked away over the beautiful valley, but it could not
drive the shadow of anxious and loving sorrow from her face. Cornelia
busied herself selecting leaves from her basket, and arranging them in a
bouquet. Like them, she was more vividly and variously beautiful since
the frost.

"Do you think men's ideas of love, and such things, are as high as
women's?" asked she presently.

"Why shouldn't they be?" answered Sophie, coming back from her reverie
with a sigh. "I'm sure Bressant's are: if they weren't--"

She sank again into thought, and another long silence followed. This
time Cornelia's hands were still, but she watched Sophie closely.

"Well--suppose they weren't--suppose he were to turn out not quite so
high-minded, and all that, as you think him: you would stop loving him,
wouldn't you?"

"Why do you suggest it!" cried Sophie, almost with a sob. She bent down,
resting her face upon her arms, and against the rock. "That question has
come to me once before. How can I know? If he were to degenerate
now--now, after I have told him that I love him--it must be because he
no longer loved me; and I should have no right to love him, then."

Cornelia looked down, for there was a certain light in her eyes which
had no right to be there. When she thought it was subdued, she raised
them again.

"Shouldn't you hate him always afterward? Shouldn't you want to kill
him?" demanded she, in a low voice.

"I should want to kill only the memory of his unworthiness," replied
Sophie, her voice rising and clearing, while she regarded her sister
with a full, bright glance. "As to hating him--I cannot hate any one I
have loved, Neelie." She raised herself up as she spoke, and sat erect.

"Well, you're a strange girl!" said Cornelia, who was a little confused.
"I don't see how you can ever be either happy or unhappy. Nothing human
seems to have any hold upon you."

"I'm very human," returned Sophie, shaking her head. "There are some
things, I think, would soon drive me out of the world, if God wore to
send them to me."

The idea of death, when brought home to Cornelia, never failed to affect
her. If she had been planning the destruction of an enemy, she would
have wept bitterly at the sight of that enemy's dead body; nay, even at
a vivid account of his death. Sophie's words brought tears to her eyes
at once, and a quaver into her voice.

"Don't--please don't talk that way, dear; it isn't so easy to die as you
think, I'm sure. The idea of dying because anybody was wicked! It's only
because you've been ill, and have got into the habit of expecting to
die, that you have such ideas--isn't it? don't you think so? You'll stop
feeling so as soon as you're well again--won't you?"

"Perhaps," said Sophie, with, it may be, a particle of satire in her
smile.

They now got up from the rock and began to descend toward the Parsonage.
Sophie stepped with a quick but careful precision, never slipping or
missing her footing. Cornelia made short rushes, and daring jumps, often
coining near to fall. Her mind was a Babel of new thoughts; or rather
one idea spoke with many tongues, and made much disturbance.

The greatest crimes are often perpetrated by those who, in their own
phrase, follow the lead of the moment, and let things take their course.
Things never take their own course, in a certain sense; what we do, and
say, and think, creates circumstances and shapes results. There seems
always to be a choice of paths. We profess--and believe--that we are
neutral; that we surrender ourselves to the chance of the current. But
let an evil hope--a dangerous wish--once enter our minds: something we
venture only half to hint to ourselves in the non-committal whispers of
a craven, unacknowledged longing-working secretly within us, it will act
upon our course as a rudder, which, hidden beneath the water, steers the
vessel inevitably toward a certain goal. Perhaps, when the current has
become too swift, and the rudder, clamped in one fatal position, cannot
be turned, we may realize, and recoil; but now, indeed, we follow the
lead of the moment; now, beyond a doubt, we let things take their
course: we are hurried on irresistibly; that which we dared not openly
to name, or fairly to face, now looms awfully above us--an irrevocable,
accomplished fact.

Beyond doubt it would have been safer to have steadily and fearlessly
kept the end in view from the outset: for the full horror of it would
have been visible while yet there was time to change our minds. Few
people have the nerve to jump from a precipice, or stand in way of a
railway-engine, without first shutting their eyes, and perhaps their
ears also.

In Cornelia's mind there was no intention of ruining her sister's
happiness by interfering between her and Bressant; but then she did not
think it likely that to lose him would occasion Sophie any thing more
than a temporary and comparatively trifling degree of suffering. If she
could allow her love for him to depend upon the immaculateness of his
moral character, she did not love him as much as Cornelia, to whose
affection any considerations of that kind were immaterial. What, after
all, was Sophie's love but an idealization, which had, to be sure, taken
Bressant as its object, but which placed no vital dependence upon him?
But Cornelia's love was to her a matter of life and death: she was
quite convinced that to live without Bressant would be an impossibility.

The next question was, whether Bressant was really as good as Sophie
believed him to be. Cornelia did not think he was. Perhaps a secret
sense of his attitude toward her suggested her suspicions; perhaps they
were the result of her New-York experience, which had taught her just
enough about men to make her imagine there was more or less of dark and
indefinite villainy in the composition of all of them; perhaps it was
her wish that fathered her moral misgivings about him--for it must be
confessed that Cornelia was very far from shrinking at the idea of
seeing her suspicions verified.

Indeed, was it not, on all accounts, desirable that, whatever
objectionable points and passages the young man's life-record contained,
should be at once forthcoming? Cornelia could not restrain a feeling of
satisfaction at the growing conviction that it would be doing Sophie a
kind and friendly service to inform her, in time, what a reprobate she
was about to marry--if he only could be proved a reprobate! This
question of proof was the only one difficulty in Cornelia's way; all the
rest was as clear and easy as is generally the case in such matters.

It would not do to lie about it: Cornelia had a natural if not a moral
disinclination to falsehood, and was, moreover, acute enough to see how
strong, in this case, would be the chances of detection. It was not
likely that Sophie would accept upon hearsay any imputations or
accusations against her lover: she would speak to Bressant at once; the
lie would be revealed, and the result would be not only a failure to
alienate Sophie from him, but a certainty of alienating him from
Cornelia.

No; her reliance must be placed upon facts. Whatever she could hear to
the young man's disadvantage that was true, beyond the possibility of
his denial, that she must at once make known to Sophie: it was no less
than her duty. Or, better still, why would it not be enough simply to
inform Bressant of her dark discovery, and compel him, by the threat of
revelation, to give up Sophie of his own accord! Cornelia, in
congratulating herself upon this shrewd idea, did not perceive how
entirely it transformed the whole aspect and spirit of her intention.

So much being arranged, the next thing was to put herself in the way of
learning the objectionable truths which she had persuaded herself
existed. This was rather an awkward point. How should she go to work? to
whom apply? who would be most likely to know, or, knowing, to impart
what Cornelia desired to hear? Aunt Margaret? But it was not certain
that she knew any thing about him more than the little Cornelia had
herself told her: if not useless, it would certainly be rash to make
inquiries of her, especially since it would have to be done by letter.
Aunt Margaret wouldn't do.

Her papa? No, no! that was quite out of the question. He might not
approve--he was old-fashioned--he wouldn't understand the necessity--he
might ask her disagreeable questions--and besides--no, he must be given
up.

But besides Aunt Margaret, and Professor Valeyon, who was there?
Cornelia was quite at a loss. To think of being obliged to give up the
whole explosion, merely for want of a match to touch off the powder,
that was unendurable! She would not give it up; she would let herself be
guided by circumstances; something would be sure to turn up that would
serve her purpose; she must be on the alert, that was all, and let
things take their course. One thing troubled her--the day of the wedding
was not much over two months distant! Every thing must be done before
then. It was to be hoped that things would take their course with a
reasonable degree of rapidity.

As regarded the favorable result to herself of Bressant's separation
from Sophie, Cornelia seems never to have entertained a doubt. That he
would fall into a state of despair, and of bitterness against all women,
herself included, she was unable, consistently with her confidence in
herself, to believe. Far more natural was it, that, finding Sophie no
longer could care for him, he would seek to repose and refresh his heart
elsewhere: and where so soon as with Cornelia? Indeed it was a mystery
to her how he had ever come to care for Sophie at all; and the reason of
the mystery was, that she had felt a movement of passion in him toward
herself. There was certainly not much similarity between the sisters,
and it was not strange that Cornelia should be inclined to doubt the
validity of her rival's claim to supremacy in Bressant's heart.

Her rival! The current of events had already carried Cornelia a
considerable distance beyond her position on the evening of her return
from New York, when she had excused her beautiful appearance, to
herself, by suggesting that it would not do for the husband of her
sister to detest her! That was sophistry, and it was sophistry that
served her now; but the subjects upon which she exercised it were
becoming hourly more and more ticklish. The woman of two weeks back
would have started and turned pale before the woman of to-day.

It would be very funny--if it were not so deep a tragedy--the havoc
bungling human fingers make in essaying the work of Providence. No one
but God can know how delicate are the petals of his flowers, nor on what
depend their bloom and fragrance. Hearts are sacred things; we should
beware of meddling, not alone with others' but with our own.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A BIT OF INSPIRATION.

Bressant was in the habit of spending three hours every afternoon at the
Parsonage. Part of this time was passed in the professor's study,
pursuing theological lore; for, whatever the young man's ultimate
expectations with regard to his career and fortune may have been, it was
no part of his plan to allow his future father-in-law to suspect any
tiling else than what he had already given him to understand.

After lessons were over he joined Sophie on the balcony, walked with her
in the garden, or gave her his arm up the hill. Cornelia was seldom to
be seen, at least within speaking distance. At the same time she did not
keep entirely out of the way. Often, when wandering with her sister
through the garden-paths, Bressant would catch a glimpse of her buoyant
figure and rich-toned face upon the balcony; or, if himself established
there, would presently behold her, in a garden hat and shortened skirt,
raking the fallen leaves off the paths and flower-beds, and perhaps
trundling them stoutly away in a wheelbarrow afterward. It thus happened
that, although seldom exchanging a word with her, he was continually
receiving fresh reminders of her, in one way or another; and he was,
moreover, haunted by an idea that Cornelia was not unconscious that he
was observing her.

Two or three days subsequent to Cornelia's conversation with Sophie on
the hill-top, Bressant, on his afternoon way to the Parsonage, met the
former coming in the opposite direction. It was nearly at the end of the
long level stretch, which was now resplendent with many-colored maples,
which were interspersed at short intervals between the willows. He had
been walking; swiftly with his eyes on the ground, when, chancing to
raise them, lie saw Cornelia walking on toward him.

How beautifully she trod, erect, her round chin held in, stepping
daintily yet firmly; it seemed as if the earth were an elastic sphere
beneath her feet, she moving tirelessly onward. She had plucked a branch
of gorgeous leaves from one of the maples, which she brandished about
ever and anon, to keep the flies away. A straw hat, narrow-brimmed,
slanted downward over hair and forehead. Her oval cheeks were more than
usually luminous from exercise; her eyes were bright tawny brown, the
lids shaped in curves, like the edges of a leaf. The vigorous roundness
of her full and perfect figure was hinted here and there through the
light drapery of her dress, as she walked forward. The October breeze
seemed the sweeter for blowing past her.

"You must be rather late--I don't often meet you!" said she, with a
smile which put Bressant traitorously at his ease.

"Early, more than late," responded he, stopping as he saw that she
stopped.

"Are you?--well, then--I don't often see you--would you mind walking
with me just a little way?" and she touched him lightly on the shoulder
with her maple-branch, as with the wand of an enchantress.

He, in obedience rather to the touch than the words, turned about and
walked beside her.

"I've a right to a sister's privileges, you know," continued she,
slipping her hand beneath his arm, and letting it rest upon it.

How very delightful, as well as simple, to solve the problem of their
intercourse on this basis! Bressant did not know how it might feel to
have a sister, but he could, at the moment, imagine nothing more
delightful than to be Cornelia's brother--unless it were to be Sophie's
husband. But to be both!

"Do you know," pursued she, with apparent hesitation, looking up in his
face, and then immediately looking down again, "I've had a notion, since
coming back from New York, that you don't like me so well as you did?"

This might be either audacity or delicacy, as one chose to take it.
Bressant, feeling himself put rather on the defensive, answered hastily
and without premeditation:

"I like you more!"

"Oh! I'm so glad to hear you say so!" exclaimed she warmly, and as she
spoke he felt her hand a little more perceptibly on his arm. "It takes
such a load off my heart! seeing you and Sophie love one another so
much, I couldn't help loving you, too, in my way; and it made me so
unhappy to think I was disagreeable to you."

Bressant was quite unprepared for all this. Whatever had been his
speculations as to the future footing upon which he and Cornelia should
stand, it had been nothing like that she was now furnishing. It did not
seem at all in the vein which she had opened on the day of her return.
He was puzzled: had he been more used to ladies' society, he would have
mistrusted her sincerity.

"You could never be disagreeable to me!" was his answer: and he looked
down at her oval cheek, with his first attempt at fraternal admiration.
It turned out badly. She looked unexpectedly up: his glance fell through
her tawny eyes, and sank down, burning deliciously, into her heart. She
turned pale with the pain and the pleasure: but it was such pain and
pleasure that she sought, and wanted more of.

"Well, then! it's all clear between us again--is it?" resumed she,
drawing a long breath, which sounded more like the irrepressible
out-come of a tumultuous heart, than a sigh of relieved suspense upon
the point in question. "No more misunderstandings, or any thing? and you
won't get out of the way ally more, as if I were poison--will you?"

"I never did!" protested he, laughing awkwardly. In the last few minutes
he had developed a sentiment hitherto unknown to him--pique! He had been
imagining Cornelia in love with him, and angry at his preference for
Sophie; whereas, it would now seem that the only reason she cared for
him at all, was because he was Sophie's lover: a most correct spirit in
her, no doubt; but, instead of being gratified, as was his duty, he felt
provoked.

"Oh! yes, you behaved shockingly!" rejoined Cornelia, laughing with him.
"Mind! I don't care how devoted you are to Sophie--the more the better;
but, when you do notice me, I want you to do it kindly--won't you?"

"I'll be sure to, now that I know you care any thing about it."

"And what made you think I didn't care about it, if you please, sir?"

"Why," stammered he, quite at a loss what to say, and so coming out with
the truth, "I thought you were offended at my being engaged to Sophie!"

"But what should there be in that to offend me?" demanded Cornelia, with
the mouth and eyes of Innocence.

"I don't know:--well--I knew you first!" he blurted forth, beginning to
wish he had been satisfied to hold his tongue.

Cornelia took her breath once or twice, and then bit it off on her under
lip, as if about to say something, and afterward hesitating about it.

"I don't quite understand you," she managed to get out at last; "do
you--forgive me if I'm wrong--but perhaps you're thinking of that
time--when--just before I went away?"

Saying this, she drooped her eyes in a confusion, which, because more
than half of it was genuine, made her look very fascinating. Nothing is
more seductive than a little truth. As Bressant looked at her, and
thought of what lie had done at that last interview, soft thrills crept
sweetly through his blood, and he felt a most extraordinary tenderness
for her.

"I've often thought of it," answered he, in a tone which did not belie
his words.

"Well--so have I, to tell the truth!" rejoined Cornelia, looking up for
a moment with glowing candor. "But we won't either of us think of it any
more, will we? It seems very long ago, now; and it'll never be again,
and we ought to forget it ever was at all. But, oh! most of all, you
must forget it if it will ever be a reason for your disliking me, or
wishing not to see me! I know how disagreeable it must be to you to
think of it now."

Did Cornelia know what she was about? had she netted beforehand all the
meshes of this web she was throwing over him? the admirable mixture of
frankness and subtlety, nature and art--must it not have been planned
and calculated beforehand, to bewilder and mislead?--It may well be
doubted. No preconceived and elaborated programme can come up to the
inspiration of the moment, which is genius. Such felicitous wording of
subject-matter so objectionable: such an unassailable presentation of so
indefensible a principle--could hardly have been the fruit of
premeditation. Cornelia was allowing things to take their course.

"It isn't disagreeable! it's--" Bressant broke off, unable or unprepared
to say what it was. "Why must we forget it?" he added, with a
half-assured look of significance. "You said we were brother and sister,
you know!"

She laughed in his face, at the same time drawing her hand from his arm,
and stepping away from him. How tantalizingly lovely she looked!

"It won't do to carry the privileges of relationship too far, my dear
sir! at least, not until after you're married. There! go back to your
Sophie--I didn't mean to keep you so long--really! No, no!" as he made
an offer to approach her; "go! and be quick, I advise you. Good-by!"

Bressant, as he walked on to the Parsonage, was possessed by an
undefined conviction that he was learning a great deal not set down in
the books. The page of the passions, once thrown open, seems to comprise
every thing. The world has but one voice for the man of one idea.

Evidently, this man did not comprehend the nature of his position
between these two women. Reason told him it was impossible he could love
both at once; but there her information stopped. His senses assured him
that, with Cornelia, he experienced a vivid rush of emotion, such as
Sophie, strongly as he loved her, never awakened in him; but his senses
could give him no explanation of the fact. His instinct whispered that
he would not have dared, in his most ardent moments, to feel toward
Sophie as he invariably felt toward her sister; but no instinct warned
him of the danger which this implied. A sturdy principle, if it had not
thrown light upon the question, would, at least, have pointed out to him
the true course to adopt; but, unfortunately, principles, and the
impulses which they are formed to control, are neither of simultaneous
nor proportionate growth. Bressant, while partaking so liberally of
emotional food, had quite neglected to provide himself with the
necessary and useful correctives to such indulgences. Thus it happened
that when he arrived, a little past his usual hour, at the
Parsonage-door, his mental digestion was in a very disturbed condition.

In palliation of Cornelia's conduct, there is little or nothing to be
adduced. Strong forces had been laboring within her during the last few
months. Love, disappointment, a passionate nature, a sense of wrong--not
least, her New-York experience--had developed, warped, and transformed
her. Bressant's homage had been the first, of any value to her, which
she had ever received. It had come unasked and unexpected, and had been
all the more attractive, because there was something not quite regular
about it. Being lost, she had felt a fierce necessity for repossessing
it, under whatever form, under whatever name. To-day, it was but the
turn of the conversation that had suggested the expedient of calling
herself his sister.

The very beauty and purity of the fraternal relation cloaks the
miserable rottenness of the imitation. So innocent does it seem, it
might almost deceive the parties to the deception themselves. "I may
love him, for I'm his sister!" said Cornelia; but could she in reality
have become his sister, she would, beyond all else, have shrunk from it.
"Nothing I do is in itself an impropriety," she could say: but her
secret sense and motive were enough to make the most innocent act
criminal. She closed her ears to the inner voice, and her eyes, looking
at her conduct only through the crimson glass of her desire, pronounced
it good.

She walked swiftly, immersed in thought, along the October road, beneath
the splendid canopy, and over the gorgeous strewn carpet, of the dying
trees. She was going to call on Abbie, it having occurred to her that
perhaps the kind of information she wanted concerning Bressant might be
forthcoming there. Presently, the rapid rise in the road at the end of
the level stretch checked the current of her ideas, and threw them into
confusion. Out of the confusion rose unexpectedly one.

Cornelia stopped in her walk, with one foot advanced, her head thrown
up, her finger on her chin. She looked like a glorious young sibyl,
reading a divine prophecy upon the clouds. After a moment, she waved her
autumn banner over her head, with a gesture of triumph, and, turning on
her heel, began to walk back toward home.

The grandest discoveries are so simple! Cornelia laughed to think how
blind she had been--how stupid! What a sense of power and independence
was hers now! To turn homeward had been instinctive. So strong was the
sense of an end gained--a point settled--that, whatever may have been
the actual errand on which she had started, she felt that her work, for
that day, at least, was done.

She had been planning, and speculating, and worrying, to discover a safe
and sure method of separating Bressant and her sister. Peering into the
past for materials, and searching on one side or another for sources of
information, she had overlooked all that was best and nearest at hand.
What need for her to scrape together a reluctant tale of what had been?
for was not the future her own? Why rely for assistance upon this or
that suspicious and unsatisfactory witness? What more trustworthy one
could she find than herself? Suppose Bressant never to have done any
thing that could make him unworthy of Sophie, was that a bar against his
doing something in the future?

Yes; she had power over him, and would use it. She herself would be the
means and the cause for attaining the end at which she aimed. She would
be the accomplice of his indiscretion, and thus obtain over him a double
advantage. No matter how intrinsically trifling the indiscretion might
be, it would be just such a one as would be sure to weigh heavily in the
balance of Sophie's pure judgment. So plain would this be to Bressant
himself, that Cornelia would be able to rule him (as she argued) merely
with the threat of accusation. And, since his desertion of Sophie would
appear to her causeless, the indignation she would feel thereat would
save her from repining. Cornelia would have him all to herself!

Well! and what would she do with him when she had him? She did not stop
to consider. Nor, going on thus from step to step, did she have a sense
of the hideousness of the wrong she contemplated.

CHAPTER XXV.

ANOTHER INTERMISSION.

It was something of a surprise to Bressant, after his interview with
Cornelia, that she still continued to avoid him. But, after what she had
said to him, to set his mind at rest regarding the spirit and manner of
their intercourse, she felt an intuition that it would be as well he
should believe that she herself was not over-anxious to be on any terms
with him whatever.

Still, he often saw her, and always carried away a charming impression
of what he saw. Once, she had mounted a chair in the library, and was in
the act of reaching down a book from a high shelf, when he entered
unexpectedly. She turned, caught his eye, and dimpled into a mischievous
smile. All day he could not drive the picture out of his head--the
bounteous, graceful form, the heavy, dark, lustreless hair, the
fascinating face, and the smile. He had but just left Sophie, yet the
fine chords she had struck in him were drowned in Cornelia's sensuous
melody.

Again, one day, coming into the house, he chanced to enter the parlor,
and there sat Cornelia, in an easy-chair, her feet stretched out upon a