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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, _dsole_, 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 _attache_.'"

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 stool, fast asleep. He came close up to her, and stood looking. What artist could ever have hoped to reproduce the warmth, glow, and richness of color and outline? He watched her, feeling it to be a stolen pleasure, yet a nameless something, surging up within him, compelled him to remain. In another moment--who can calculate a man's strength and weakness?--he might have stooped to kiss her, with no brother's kiss! But, in that moment, she awoke, and perhaps surprised his half-formed purpose in his eyes.

She was too clear-headed to regret having awaked, for she saw that he regretted it. And, because he did not venture, she being awake, to take the kiss, she knew he was no brother, and knew not what it was to be one. So she put on a look of annoyance, and told him petulantly to go about his business. Off he went, and passed his hour with Sophie, who was as lovely, as fresh, and as purely transparent as ever. But some turbid element had been stirred in Bressant's depths, which spoiled his enjoyment for that day, making him moody and silent.

Such little incidents--there were many of them--were far too simple and natural to be the work of deliberation and forethought. But Cornelia was disposed to use them, when they did occur, to her best possible advantage, and therefore they acquired potency to affect Bressant. She wished that to be, which he had not stamina enough to oppose: thus a subtle bond was established between them, lending a significance to the most ordinary actions, such as could never have been recognized between indifferent persons.

This was all progress for Cornelia, and she well knew it, and yet she was not at ease nor satisfied. She began to find out that it was no such light matter to usurp the place of such a woman as Sophie, though the latter was laboring under the great disadvantage of being ignorant of the plot against her. In most cases, indeed, the attempt would have been wellnigh hopeless, but Cornelia had two exceptionally powerful allies--her own supreme beauty, and Bressant's untrained and ill-regulated animal nature, which he had not yet learned to understand and provide against. And there was another thing in her favor, too, although she knew it not--the demoralizing effect upon the young man's character--of his failure to fulfil his agreement with the professor. The evils that are in us link themselves together to drag us down, their essential quality being identical, whatever their particular application.

Nevertheless, time went on, and November had stalked shivering away before the frosty breath of December, and still Cornelia had accomplished nothing definite; nay, she scarcely felt sufficiently sure of her footing to attempt any thing. And what was it that she was to attempt? On looking this question in the face, at close quarters--it wanted less than four weeks now of that wedding-day which Cornelia had promised herself should see no wedding!--when she found herself pressed so peremptorily as this for an answer, it might be imagined that she turned pale at what was before her. And, indeed, the prospect, viewed in its best light, was discouraging and desperate enough. For at what price to herself must success be bought, and at what sacrifice be enjoyed? She must either lose, or deserve to lose, all that a woman ought to hold most sacred and most dear--home, the esteem and love of friends, the protection of truth, and, above all, and worst of all, her own self-respect. All these in exchange for a baffled, angry, selfish man, at whose mercy she would be, with only one word to speak in self-defense and justification; and it was much to be feared that he would, considering the circumstances, reject and scoff at even that. The one word was--she loved him! and, if there be any redeeming virtue in it, let her, in Heaven's name, have the benefit thereof. She can rely on nothing else.

But Cornelia would not be disheartened. If she saw the rocks ahead, against whose fatal shoulders she was being swept--if she heard, dinning in her ears, the rush and roar of the headlong, irresistible rapids--if her eyes could penetrate the void which opened darkly beyond--she only nerved herself the more resolutely, her glance was all the firmer, her determination the more unfaltering.

The peril in which she stood but kindled in her heart a fiery depth of passion, such as overtopped and tamed the very terrors of her position. Because she must lose the world to gain her end, that end was exalted, in her thought, above a hundred worlds. The faculties of her soul, which, in her time of innocence and indifference, had been dormant--half alive--now sprang at once into an exalted, fierce vitality. The hour of evil found Cornelia a creature of far higher powers and more vigorous development than she could ever, under any other conditions, have attained. She showed most gloriously and greatly, when illuminated by that lurid light whose flame was fed by all that was most gentle, womanly, and sweet within her. She looked nearest to a goddess, when she needed but one step to be transformed into a demon.

In following out her psychological progress, we have necessarily outstripped, to some extent, the sober pace of the narrative. It was about the first of December that rumors began to be circulated in the village of an approaching ball at Abbie's. It was to be the grandest--the most complete in all its appointments--of any that ever had been given there. It was looked upon, in advance, as the great event of the year. Real, formal invitations were to be sent out, printed on a fold of note-paper, with the blank left for the name, and "R.S.V.P."--whatever that might mean--in the lower left-hand corner. There were to be six pieces in the band; dancing was to be from eight to four, instead of from seven to twelve, as heretofore; and the toilets, it was further whispered, were to be exceptionally brilliant and elaborate. Certain it was that dress-making might have been seen in progress through the windows of any farm-house within ten miles; and at the Parsonage no less than elsewhere.

Sophie had an exquisite taste in costume, though her ideas, if allowed full liberty, were apt to produce something too fanciful and eccentric to be fashionably legitimate. But, let a dress once be made up, and happy she whose fortune it was to stand before Sophie and be touched off. Some slight readjustment or addition she would make which no one else could have thought of, but which would transform merely good or pretty into unique and charming. Sophie had the masterly simplicity of genius, but was generally more successful with others than with herself.

As for Cornelia, she knew how she ought to look; but how to effect what she desired was sometimes beyond her ability. She had little faculty for detail, relying on her sister to supplement this deficiency. She was more of a conformist than was Sophie in regard to toilet matters; and--an important virtue not invariable with young ladies--she always could tell when she had on any thing becoming.

One December day, when a broad, pearl-gray sky was powdering the motionless air with misty snow, the sisters sat together at their sewing in what had been known, since his accident, as Bressant's room. There was no stove; but a rustling, tapering fire was living its ardent, yellow, wavering life upon the brick hearth, and four or five logs of birch and elm were reddening and crackling into embers beneath its intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank of snow that lay, light and round, upon the outside sill and the slighter ridges that sloped and clung along the narrow foothold of the window-pane frames. Presently Cornelia got up from the low stool on which she had been sitting, and, having slipped on the waist of her new dress, invited Sophie's criticism with a courtesy.

"Dear me, Neelie!" exclaimed she, in gentle consternation, "are you going to wear your corsage so low as that?"

"Yes, why not?" returned Cornelia, with a kind of defiance in her tone; "it's the fashion, you know. Oh, I've seen them lower than that in New York!"

"But there'll be nothing like it here, dear, I'm sure. Think how frightened poor Bill Reynolds will be when he sees you."

Sophie looked up, expecting to see her sister smile; but she, having in view the opinion of quite another person than Mr. Reynolds, remained unusually grave.

"Don't mind me, dear," Sophie added, fearing she might have given offense. "You know I'd rather see you look well than myself, especially as I may not be here to see you another year."

She drew a long breath of happy regret, thinking of what was to follow the next day but one after the ball.

Cornelia, looking into the fire, her pure, round chin resting on her bent forefinger, started, as the same thought entered her mind. Was it so near, though--that marriage? or would an eternity elapse ere Bressant and Sophie called one another husband and wife?

"Are you glad the day comes so soon, Sophie?"

"Yes," answered she, with quiet simplicity. "A few weeks ago it frightened me--it seemed so near; but not now. I love him much more than I did--that's one reason. And he loves me more, I think."

"Loves you more! why? what makes you think so?" demanded Cornelia, a frown quivering across her forehead.

"His manner tells me so: he's more subdued and gentle; almost sad, indeed, sometimes. He's lived so much in his mind since we were engaged: I can see it in his face, and hear it in his voice, even. He's not like other men; I never want him to be; he has all that makes other men worth any thing, and still is himself. He has the greatest and the warmest heart that ever was; but when he first came here he had no idea how to use it, nor even what it was for."

"And he's found out now, has he?"

"Yes--especially in the last few weeks. Before, he used sometimes to be violent, almost--to lose command of himself; but he never does now."

"But doesn't he ever tell you that he loves you more than ever?"

"We understand each other," replied Sophie, with a slight touch of reserve, for she thought she was being questioned further than was entirely justifiable. "Nothing he could say would make me feel his love more than I do."

Cornelia smiled to herself with secret derision; she imagined she could give a more plausible reason for her sister's reticence. She took off her "waist" and resumed her place upon the stool.

"What should you do, Sophie, supposing something occurred to prevent your marriage?"

"Die an old maid," returned she: not treating the question seriously, but as a piece of Cornelia's wanton idleness.

Cornelia began to laugh, but interrupted herself, half-way, with a sob. She was seized by a fantasy that if Sophie died an old maid her sister would have been the cause of it--would be a murderess! The sudden jarring of this idea--tragical enough, even without the ghastly spice of reality that there was about it--against the ludicrous element with which tradition flavors the name of old maid--caught the young woman at unawares, and threw her rudely out of her nervous control. It was a result which could scarcely have happened, had she been less morbidly and unnaturally excited and strained to begin with; as it was, it may have been an outbreak which had long been brewing, and to which Sophie's answer had but given the needful stimulus.

The sob was succeeded by a convulsion of painful laughter, that would go on the more Cornelia tried to stop it. At last, in gasping for breath, the laughter gave way to an outburst of tears and sobs, which seemed, in comparison, to be a relief. But at the first intermission, the discordant laughter came again: she hid her face in her hands, and made wild efforts to control herself: she slipped from her stool, and flung herself at full length upon the floor. Now, the paroxysms of laughing and crying came together, her body was shaken, strained, and convulsed in every part: she was breathless, flushed, and faint. But it seemed as if nothing short of unconsciousness could bring cessation: the sobs still tore their way out of her bosom, and the laughter came with a terrible wrench that was more agonizing to hear than a groan.

Sophie had never seen Cornelia in hysterics before, and was tortured with alarm and apprehension. She knew not what to do, for every attempt she made to relieve her, seemed only to make her worse.

"Let me call papa--he must be somewhere in the house--he will know what to do!" she said, at last, trembling and white.

"No! no!" cried Cornelia: and the shock of fear lest her father should see her, overcame the grasp of the hysterical paroxysm. She half raised herself on one arm, showing her face, red and disfigured, the veins on the forehead standing out, full and throbbing. "Come back! come back!" for Sophie had her hand on the door.

She returned, in compliance with her sister's demand, and knelt down beside her on the floor. Cornelia let herself fall back, her head resting on Sophie's knee, in a state of complete exhaustion. There she lay, panting heavily; and a clammy pallor gradually took the place of the deeply-stained flush. But the fit was over: by-and-by she sat up, sullenly shunning Sophie's touch, and appearing to shrink even at the sound of her voice. Finally, she rose inertly to her feet, attempting to moisten her dry lips, walked once or twice aimlessly to and fro across the room, and ended by sitting down again upon her stool, and taking up her sewing.

"Are you all well again, dear?" asked Sophie, timidly.

"Better than ever," replied Cornelia, with a short laugh, which had no trace of hysteria about it.

There was, however, a slight but decided change in her manner, which did not pass away: a sort of hardness and impenetrability: and so incorporated into her nature did these traits seem, that one would have supposed they had always been there. Some unpleasant visitors take a surprisingly short time to make themselves at home.

But Sophie, seeing that her sister soon recovered her usual appearance, did not allow herself to be disturbed by any uncalled-for anxieties. Love, at its best, has a tendency to absorb and preoccupy those whom it inspires: if not selfish, it is of necessity self-sufficient and exclusive. Sophie was too completely permeated with her happiness, to admit of being long overshadowed by the ills of those less blessed than herself. Not that she had lost the power to sympathize with misfortune, but the sympathy was apt to be smiling rather than tearful. She was alight with the chaste, translucent, wondering joy of a maiden before her marriage: the delicate, pearl-tinted brightness that pales the stars, before the reddening morning brings on the broader daylight.

She was not of those who, in fair weather, are on the lookout for rain: she believed that God had plenty of sunshine, and was generous of it; and that the possibilities of bliss were unlimited. She was not afraid to be perfectly happy. A little sunny spot, in a valley, which no shadow has crossed all day long, was like her: there seemed to be nothing in her soul that needed shadow to set it right.

Cheerfulness was soon reestablished, therefore, so far as she was concerned; and the remembrance of Cornelia's distracting seizure presently yielded to the throng of light-footed thoughts that were ever knocking for admittance at her heart's door. Once afterward, however, the event was recalled to her memory, by the revelation of its cause. Little that happens in our lives would seem trifling to us, could we but trace it, forward or backward, to the end.

CHAPTER XXVI.

BRESSANT TAKES A VACATION.

Friday, December 30th, was the day appointed for Abbie's ball, and the morning of the 28th had already dawned. Bressant stood, with his arms folded, at the window of his room, watching the downfall of a thickening snow-storm which had set in the previous midnight. There had evidently been no delay or intermission in the cold, white, silent business; to look out-of-doors was enough to make the flesh seem thin upon the bones.

In spite of the snow, however, the little room was feverishly hot, owing to the gigantic exertions of the small iron cylinder-stove. The round aperture over the little door was glowing red, like an enraged eye; and the quivering radiation of the heat from the polished black surface was plainly perceptible to the sight. The room had lost something of the neat and fastidious appearance which it had worn a few months before. The colored drawing of a patent derrick, fastened to the wall by a tack at each corner of the paper, had broken loose at one end, and was curling over on itself like a withered leaf. The string by which the ingenious almanac had been suspended over the mantel-piece was broken, letting the almanac neatly down into the crevice between the wall and a couple of fat dictionaries, which lay, one on top of the other, upon the ledge. It was quite hidden from view, with the exception of one corner, which was a little tilted upward, showing the hole through which the faithless string had passed.

The terrestrial and astronomical globes bore the appearance of not having revolved for a long time. A part of the pictured surface of the latter had scaled off, disclosing a blank whiteness beneath. Even the heavens, it seemed, were a sham; nothing more than a varnished painting upon a plaster-of-Paris foundation. The flower-pots still stood in the windows, but hot air and an irregular water-supply had made sad inroads upon the beauty of the plants. The lower leaves were turned brown; some of them had fallen off, and lay--poor, little unburied corpses--upon the narrow circle of earth which, having failed to keep life green within their cells, now denied to them the right of sepulture. A few of the topmost sprouts still struggled to keep up a parody of verdure, and one or two faded flowers had not yet forsaken their calices--a silly piece of devotion on their part! Icy little blasts, squeezing in through the crevices of the window-sash, whistled about the forlorn stalks, cutting and venomous. The poor flowers would never see another summer; better give up at once!

Even the books which met the eye on every side, wore a deserted air. Not that they were dusty, for the chambermaid did her duty, if Bressant failed in his; but there was something in the heavy, methodical manner of their sleeping upon one another, such as they could never have settled into had they been recently disturbed or opened. The outside of a book is often as eloquent, in its way, as any part of the contents.

Bressant's arms were folded, and the perpendicular line up from between the eyebrows was quite in harmony with the rest of his appearance. He was weary, harassed, and divided against himself. Insincerity made him uncomfortable; it compelled continual exertion, and of a paltry and degrading kind; and it gave neither a sense of security, nor a prospect of future advantage. Five days from now he was to be married; the duties of a parish minister were to be undertaken, and he felt himself neither mentally nor morally fitted or inclined for the office. Five days from now the professor would expect from him that gift at which he had hinted during their drive; and he had done nothing, either in act or purpose, to fulfil his promise concerning it.

He was cut off from all sympathy. How could he confide to Sophie the very wrong he meditated against herself--the very deception he was practising upon her father? And what other person in the world was there to whom he might venture to betake himself? Cornelia?--not yet! he dared not yet yield himself to the influence he felt she was exercising over him; the surrender implied too much; matters had not gone far enough. But did there not lurk, in the bottom of his heart, a presentiment that it was to her alone he would hereafter be able to look for countenance and comfort? And would he avail himself of the refuge? When those whom their friends--whether justly or not--have abandoned, chance to stumble upon some oasis of unconditional affection, they are not squeamish about its source or orthodoxy; if the sentiment be sincere and hearty, that is enough. In the present case, moreover, Cornelia, as a last resort, was by no means so uninviting an object as she might have been.

But since the question lay between his fortune and Falsehood on one side, and a wife and Truth on the other, how was it possible for him to pause in his decision? Undoubtedly, had the young man once fairly admitted to himself that his choice lay between these two bare alternatives, he would have been spared much of the misery arising from casuistry and duplicity. But people are loath to acknowledge any course to be, beyond all appeal, right or wrong; they amuse themselves with fancying some modification--some new condition--some escape; any thing to get away from the grim face of the inevitable. Bressant, for instance, might surely succeed in consummating his marriage with Sophie, no matter what else he left undone; and that being once irrevocably on his side of the balance, all that was vital to his happiness was secure; by a quick stroke he might capture the fortune likewise, and could then afford to laugh at the world.

This scheme, however, otherwise practical enough, involved a fallacy in its most important point. A marriage so contracted, with a woman of Sophie's character, could by no possibility turn out a happy or even endurable union. She would not be likely long to survive it; if she did, it would be to suffer a life more painful than any death; for no one depended more than Sophie upon integrity and nobility in those she loved; and the break in her family relations would be another source of agony to her, and of consequent remorse and misery to her husband. No: to bind her life to his, unless he could also compel her respect and admiration, would be a good deal worse than useless.

He must, then--and there was yet time--resign his fortune, and accept Sophie and a clear conscience, poverty and a country parish. But persons who have wealth absolutely in their power, to take or to leave, sec clearly how much poetical extravagance, hypocrisy, and cant exist in the arguments of those who advocate the beauties and advantages of being poor. Deliberately and voluntarily to forego the opportunities, the influence, the ease, the refinement, which money alone can command--let not the sacrifice be underrated! Few, perhaps, have had the choice fairly offered them: of those, how many have chosen poverty? In Bressant's case, the fact that the money was not legally his, was, abstractly, enough to settle the matter; but in real life, where every one is expected to do battle for his claims, it would only be an argument for holding on the harder. If he could but manage to be happily married and wealthy both! He would not confess it impossible; at all events, he would delay the confession till the very latest hour, and then trust to the impulse of the moment for his final decision and action. He had given up, it seemed, that promising idea of trusting to the generosity of the rightful owner; yet, considering their mutual relation, and one or two minor circumstances, he might certainly do so without misgiving, embarrassment, or dishonor.

"It's that infernal letter!" muttered the young man between his teeth, staring gloomily out at the cheerless snow-storm. "I wish it had never been written. No! that I could feel sure there was no truth in it."

Turning from the window, he stepped over to the table, and dropped himself into his chair. He took from his pocket a well-worn envelope, hardly capable of holding on to the inclosed letter, which peeped forth at the corners, and through various rents in the front and back. He did not open it, for he had long known by heart every word and italic in it; but, placing it in front of him, he leaned upon his elbows, with his forehead resting between his hands, and gazed fixedly down upon it. It is an assistance to the vividness of thought to have some object in sight connected with the matter under consideration.

"Ought I to have answered it?" ran his soliloquy: for though he had frequently taken counsel with himself concerning this letter before, he recurred again and again to the subject, pleasing himself with the hope that still, in some way, a fortunate ray of light might be struck out; "but, if I had, what should I have gained by it? It's as well not to have risked putting any thing on paper; and if she really has the proofs she talks about, I shall hear from her again, and soon, for she knows which is my wedding-day; and it must all be decided, one way or another, before then. But she couldn't have made the assertion if she hadn't known some good grounds for it; and yet I can't understand it--I cannot." He pressed his temples strongly between his hands, and chewed his brown mustache. "As to my having 'no legal claim to a cent,' I knew that before. What puzzles me is, 'There is no consideration--not a _shadow_ of relationship, or affection, or generosity--nothing to give you the least _prospect_ of receiving any thing.' How can that be? And yet what she says at the end--it sounds more like a threat she knows she can fulfil than an attempt to humbug." Bressant took his right hand from his forehead, and tapped with his finger on the envelope as he repeated the words: "If this is enough--convinces you without your requiring proof--it would be much pleasanter for you, and a great relief to me. Oh! beyond _words_! But if not--if you will _go on_ entangling yourself with this foolish girl, Sophie, and this boarding-house keeper, and all--I _shall_ be obliged--I shall hate to _do_ it, but there will be no alternative--to give you the _explanation_ of what I tell you now."

"Well! let her!" cried the young man, rising roughly from his chair, and shouldering backward and forward across his room with short, incensed steps. "If her proofs can prevent my marriage, let her bring them. She'd better be quick about it! Four days from now! They'd better never have come at all. It's her interest as much as mine--more than mine. She's a half-crazy old creature. She can do nothing for herself. If she has any thing to say, let her say it. I'm no baby, to shape my life after an old woman's story. Who is she? What is she to me?

"Let something happen, I say," continued he, stretching out his great arms, with the fists clinched. "I'm tired of this--the life of a dog with his tail between his legs. Is it _I_ who go about, afraid to look man or woman in the face? Am I the same who came here six months ago? Did I come here to learn this? Who was it taught it to me, then? I say, I've been deceived; it's no work of mine. Professor Valeyon--he's made me a subject for experiment; he's tried his theories on me; dissected me, and filled in the parts that were wanting. It's a dangerous business, Professor Valeyon. You've lost one daughter; the other may go too."

Bressant's voice, which had been growing hoarser and more rapid as he went on, abruptly sank, at this last sentence, into a whisper; yet, had any one been there to listen, the whisper would have sounded louder and more terrible than the most violent vociferation of angry passion. It breathed a sudden concentration of evil intelligence, that startled like the hiss of a serpent.

He stopped his short, passionate walk, and leaned against his table, with his arms once more folded. The idea that he had been tampered with had gained possession of him, and nothing tends more to demoralize a man, and make him unmanageably angry. His was an uncandid position, without doubt: he was attempting to lay upon others the responsibility which--the greater part of it, at least--should have been borne by himself; but still, the vein of reasoning he pursued was connected, and comprehensible, and was rendered awkward by an ugly little thread of something like truth and justice, which showed here and there along its course.

"They've taught me to love; did they think they could stop there? that I shouldn't learn to lie, as well? and to hate, and be revengeful? and to be afraid? Was I so bad when I came here, that all this has made me no worse? I was happy, at any rate; my brain was clear; my mind had no fear, and no weariness--it was like an athlete; my blood was cool. Look at me now! Am not I ruined by this patching and mending? I can do no work. When I think, it's no longer of how I might become great, and wise, and powerful--of nothing inspiring--nothing noble; but all about these petty, heated, miserable affairs, that have twisted themselves around me, and are choking me up. I don't ask myself, any more, whether my name will be as highly honored and as long remembered as the Christian Apostles', and Mohammed's, and Luther's. My only question is, whether I'm to turn out more of a fool, or of a liar! And _I_ love Sophie Valeyon! I'm to be her husband."

The young man came to a sudden stop, and slowly lifted his head. Through the sullen, unhappy, and resentful cloud that darkened his eyes, there glimmered doubtfully a light such as can be reflected only from what is most divine in man. It was a strange moment for it to appear, for at no time had Bressant's moral level been so low as now; but, happily, the phenomenon is by no means without precedent in human nature. God is never ashamed to declare the share He holds in a sinner's heart, however black the heart may be.

"No, no!" said he; and, as he said it, the first tears that he had ever known glistened for a moment in his eyes; "such as I am, I must never marry her."

The point on which this sudden and momentous resolve turned was so subtle and delicately evanescent as scarcely to be susceptible of clearer portrayal. To be consistent, the weight of his revengeful sentiments should have been directed upon Sophie, for she it was who had played the most effective part in changing his nature, and swerving him from his cold but sublime ambitions. By teaching Bressant love, she had, by implication, done him deadly injury, yet was the love itself so pure and genuine as to prompt him to resign its object; he being rendered unworthy of her by that same moral dereliction which she herself had occasioned.

But the very quality which enables us to do a noble deed dulls our appreciation of our own praiseworthiness. Bressant took no encouragement or pleasure from what he had done; probably, also, his realization of the extensive and fearful consequences of the action, to others as well as to himself, was as yet but rudimentary; so soon as the momentary glow was passed, he fell back into a yet darker mood than before, and felt yet more adrift and reckless. To make a sacrifice is well, but does not hinder the need of what is given up from crippling us.

Again the young man turned to the window, and, raising the sash, he secured it by the little button used for the purpose, and leaned out into the snow-storm. The flakes fell and melted upon his face, and caught in his bushy beard, and rested lightly upon his twisted hair. They flew into his eyes, and made little drifts upon the collar of his coat and in the folds of his sleeves. He gazed up toward the dull, gray cloud whence they came, and presently, out of the confusion, and carelessness, and morbid impatience of his heart, he put forth a prayer that some awfully stirring event might come to pass; let a sword pass through his life! let him be smitten down and trampled upon! let his mind be continually occupied with the extreme of active, living suffering! let there be no cessation till the end! He could accept it and exult in it; but to live on as he was living now was to walk open-eyed into insanity. Rather than that, he would commit some capital crime, and subject himself to the penalty. Let God take at least so much pity upon him, and grant him physical agony!

It is not often that our prayers are answered, nor, when they are, does the answer come in the form our expectations shaped. Occasionally, however--and then, perhaps, with a promptness and completeness that force us to a realization of how extravagant and senseless our desires are--does fulfillment come upon us.

As Bressant's strange petition went up through the storm, a sleigh came along from the direction of the railway-station. It was nothing but a cart on runners, and painted a dingy, grayish blue; it was loaded with a dozen tin milk-cans much defaced by hard usage, each one stopped with an enormous cork. The driver was clad in an overcoat which once had been dark brown or black, but had worn to a greenish yellow, except where the collar turned up around the throat, and showed the original color. His head and most of his face were enveloped in a knit woolen comforter, and mittens of the same make and material protected his hands. His legs were wrapped up in a gray horse-blanket. He was whitened here and there with snow, and snow was packed between the necks of the milk-cans. He drove directly toward the boarding-house, and he and Bressant caught sight of one another at the same moment.

"Hallo!" called the stranger; "you're Bressant, I guess, ain't you? I've got something for you." Here he drew up beneath the window. "You see, I was down to the depot getting some milk aboard the up-train, and Davis, the telegraph-man, came up and asked me, 'Bill Reynolds, are you going up to Abbie's? 'cause,' says he, 'here's a telegraph has come for the student up there--him that's going to marry Sophie Valeyon--and our boy he's down with the influenza,' says he. 'I'm you're man!' says I, 'let's have it!' and here 'tis," added Mr. Reynolds, producing a yellow envelope from the bottom of his overcoat pocket.

Bressant had heard little or nothing of the explanation volunteered by the bearer of the message, but he at once recognized the yellow telegraph-envelope, and comprehended the rest. But, ere he could leave the window to go down and receive it, he saw the fat servant-girl, who had witnessed the scene from the parlor, run down to the front-gate, sinking above her ankles at every step, take the envelope from Bill's mittened paw, exchange a word and a grin with him, and then return, carefully stepping into the holes she had made going out.

Bill gave a nod of good-will to Bressant's window--for Bressant was no longer there--whipped up his nag, and jingled off with his milk-cans. In another minute the fat servant-girl, after stamping the remains of the snow off her shoes upon the door-mat, opened the door, and introduced the dispatch and her own smiling physiognomy. Bressant snatched the former, and shut the door in the latter, before the hand-wiping and haranguing had time to begin.

Before opening the envelope, he stood up at his full height, and filled his lungs with a long, profound breath; then emitted it suddenly in a sort of deep, short growl, and took his seat at the table. He tore open the end of the envelope, pulled out the inclosure, which was an ordinary printed telegraph-blank, filled in with three lines of writing, as follows: "Been very ill come on at once at once must hear all no alternative" in the scrawly and unpunctuated chirography peculiar to written telegrams. The name signed was "M. Vauderp." Bressant read the message, and afterward carefully perused the printing, even down to the name of the printer's firm, which was given in very small type at the bottom of the paper. Then he glanced over the writing once more, and returned the paper to the envelope.

"At once, at once!" muttered he; "that's the only way of writing italics in telegraphy, I suppose. Well, I'll go at once; it's ten now; there's a train at half-past."

He unlocked a drawer in his table, and took from it a purse, which he put in his pocket. He buttoned a pea-jacket across his broad chest, pressed a round fur-cap on to his handsome head, took a pair of thick gloves from the mantel-piece, and walked away without giving one backward glance.

The snow blew and drifted through the open window into the empty room; the few remaining flowers were hustled from their stalks; the red eye of the stove grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally faded into darkness, and the colored drawing of the patent derrick broke loose at another corner, and flapped and fluttered against the wall in crazy exultation.

CHAPTER XXVII.

FACT AND FANCY.

The snow-storm continued all that afternoon. The customary hour for Bressant's visit to the Parsonage went by, and he did not appear. The professor smoked two extra pipes, and spent half an hour looking out across the valley trying to discern the open spot upon the top of the hill. Finally, the early twilight set in, and he returned to his chair, but felt no impulse to light a lamp and take up a book. He sat tilted back, pulling Shakespeare's nose with meditative fingers. A gloom gradually settled over the room, withdrawing one after another of the familiar objects around him from the old gentleman's sight; it even seemed to creep into his heart, and create a vague uneasiness there. He tried to shake it off, telling himself that he was the happiest and most fortunate old fellow alive; that every thing was coming out just as he had hoped and prayed it might; that one daughter, with the man of her choice, would be just far enough removed from his fireside to give piquancy to the frequent visits he should receive from her; while the other would still, for a time, continue to pour out sunshine in the house, and redouble her love for him by way of compensating for what he should miss in Sophie's absence. And then the professor built an airier and a fairer castle still: beneath it lay the heavy clouds of suffering, barren effort, and hope deferred; its sunlit walls were hewn of solid faith; the banner which floated over the battlements was woven with white threads of truth; over the arched entrance-gate was written "Constancy." Yet, fair and lofty as the castle was, the building-materials were taken from no less homely edifices than the village boarding-house and his own Parsonage!

By-and-by, however, the vision faded, or else the clouds upon which it was built rose up and hid it. The professor, returning to himself, found that he was now surrounded with thick darkness, and, strive as he would, he could paint no fancies upon it which did not partake more or less of the character of the background. Sophie seemed to have lost the steady cheer of her aspect; she was pale and fragile, and every moment took away yet more of earthly substance, till scarcely any thing but the faint lustre of her face and form remained. Then, all at once, the features which had heretofore been only sad, changed into an expression of horror and torture and despair; and, while the professor, himself aghast, strained his old eyes to make out more clearly the half-indistinguishable image, it vanished quite away. But, at the last moment, it had spoken--at least, the lips bad moved as if in speech, though no sound had reached the professor's ears; yet he fancied he had caught a glimmering of the purport. He pressed his hands over his forehead to shut out the thought, and wondered no longer at the expression upon Sophie's face.

Then Cornelia moved across the hollow blackness of the room. She was sunshiny no longer, but morose and stern; her eyebrows were drawn together; a secret defiance was in her tigerish eyes; her lips were set, yet seemed, ever and anon, as she turned her face aside, to tremble with a passionate yearning. As he gazed, she disappeared, but the professor had a feeling that she was still concealed somewhere in the darkness. And, at last, she came again--she, or something that looked like her. The old gentleman shivered and recoiled, as though a snow-drift had somehow blown into his warm, old heart. Was it his daughter who looked with those unmeaning eyes, encircled with dark rings, in which life and passion burned out had left the dull ashes of remorse and hopelessness? Where were the luminous cheeks and the queenly step of his proud and beautiful Cornelia?--What words were those? or was it only fancy?--Ah!--The professor started with a sharp exclamation: but he was alone in his dark study, and the phantom of Cornelia was gone.

He composed himself in his chair again, and, presently, a third figure grew into form and color before him. At first, as a stately young girl, with the arched feet and hot blood of the south, and her eyes dark and soft as a Spaniard's; but her beauty lasted but for a moment. A withering change came over face and figure: she was cold and hard; her youthful ardor, warmth, and freshness, had been shrivelled up or worn away. The rich black hair grew rusty, and the dark, delicate complexion became dull and lustreless. Nevertheless, the professor continued to look with hopeful expectation, confident that a further alteration would ensue, which, though, it would not restore the grace of youth, would give a peace and happiness yet more beautiful. And, indeed, it seemed, for a moment, as though his expectation would be gratified. The figure raised its head, and held forth its hands, and the professor's bright anticipation was reflected in its eyes. But, alas! the brightness faded almost before it could be affirmed to exist. The hands dropped to the sides, the head was averted, and the whole form shrank back, and sank to the ground. For the third time--the professor's imagination was certainly playing him strange tricks this evening--the ghost of spoken words appeared to fall upon his ears, and sink like molten lead into his heart. He groaned, and there was an oppression on his chest, so that he struggled for breath; but, in another moment, the crouching figure was gone, and the oppression with it; but drops of sweat stood upon the old man's broad forehead.

Still another vision awaits him, however, and he draws himself up sternly to encounter it, and a heavy frown lowers on his thick gray eyebrows. But the lofty form which confronts him, massive and stalwart, alike in mind and body, meets his gaze unflinchingly, and frowns back in angry defiance. The old professor pauses in his intended denunciation, being taken aback somewhat, at the unexpected counter-accusation which strikes out at him from the young man's eyes. Yet do his self-confidence and indignation become reconfirmed, for there, behind, the three former phantoms appear together, and seem to launch against the last a deadly shaft of bitter reproach and judgment. The professor watches it cleave a passage through the stalwart figure's heart, and he bows his head, and thinks--it is but justice! In the same instant, a cry of intensest pain and horror escapes him: the deadly arrow, additionally poisoned by the blood it has just shed, has passed quite through the spectre of his former pupil, and is buried up to the feather in Professor Valeyon's own vitals! This shock effectually wakened the old gentleman--for, after all, he had only been having an uneasy nap in his straight-backed chair!--and he started to his feet, and fumbled nervously for the match-box. Just then, Sophie appeared at the door with a lamp in her hand--the real Sophie, this time--no intangible shadow.

"Why, papa dear! What are you doing in here in the dark? Have you been asleep?"

"Come here, my dear!" said the professor, in a shaken voice, holding out his hand. He took her on his knee, and hugged her to him eagerly, passing his hand down her arm, and pressing her slender fingers. "Are you well and happy, Sophie?"

"Yes, papa," she answered, laying her head as usual on his shoulder.

"He--your--young man didn't come to-day?" continued the professor, with an attempt to be jocose. "He's getting very squeamish to be kept back by a snow-storm!" Sophie replied only by nestling closer to her father's shoulder.

"Where's Neelie?" inquired the professor, again breaking the silence.

"She's seeing about supper, I believe."

"Have you heard any thing about Abbie lately?" proceeded the other. He must have been either strangely anxious to keep up a conversation, or unusually inquisitive, this evening.

"Not very lately; I saw her about a week ago. She didn't look in very good spirits, it seemed to me."

"Not in good spirits, eh? not in good spirits? and that was a week ago! was she ill?"

"I don't think there was any thing the matter--with her health, I mean; she only looked very sad--as if something had almost broken her heart. But then she always is grave, you know."

"She has been of late years, that's certain," muttered the old man, gruffly; "and does she begin to be broken-hearted _now_!" he added, to himself. More thoughts, and angry ones, he might have had, but the memory of his untoward dream still hovered about him, and he suppressed them.

"What are you thinking of, papa?" demanded Sophie, with an inquietude of manner which attracted the professor's attention. He laid his finger on her pulse, and touched her forehead.

"You've taken cold, my dear," he said, with the most tender anxiety of tone. "What have you been doing? How have you exposed yourself?"

"I was out on the porch about an hour ago," replied she, languidly. "I wanted to--to see if he was coming, you know. The snow came on me a little, I believe, and I had on my slippers. But I didn't feel any thing--any cold. I was out only a moment."

Professor Valeyon turned his strong-featured face away from the lamp, so that the shadow covered his expression. He could feel the heat of Sophie's cheek through his coat, as she lay heavily on his shoulder; heavily, but not half so heavily there as upon his heart. But, with the physician's instinct, his voice was on that account all the more cheerful.

"Well, well, my little girl; it won't do to run any risks nowadays, remember! I shall make you drink a big cup of hot water, with a little tea and sugar in it, and go to bed early, with three or four extra blankets. Meanwhile, come! let's go and see whether Cornelia has got supper ready yet." So saying, the old gentleman gained his feet, offering his arm with a bow, took up the lamp with his other hand, and off they went, leaving Shakespeare's plaster bust placidly to face the darkness alone, as he had often done before.

The next morning the storm was over, and the sun came dazzling over the spotless fields, but Sophie kept her bed, with bright, restless eyes, and hot checks. The professor dreaded a return of the typhoid pneumonia, and paced his study incessantly, in a voiceless fever of anxiety; physically exhausting himself the better to affect quiet and unconcern when in her room. He mentioned his fears to no one--not even to Cornelia; besides, if care were taken, she might recover yet, without fatal, or even serious danger. To herself, therefore, and to all who inquired, he spoke of her attack as merely a cold, which must be nursed for prudence' sake. Meanwhile, no signs of Bressant. Sophie said not a word, but Cornelia showed uneasiness, and kept making suggestive remarks to her father, and hazarding unsatisfactory explanations of his absence. She never ventured to say any thing to her sister on the subject, however. There was a gulf between the two that widened like a river, hour by hour.

Toward evening a letter came from the boarding-house, directed to Professor Valeyon. It was in Abbie's handwriting, and must contain some news of Bressant. The old gentleman shut himself up in his room, the better to deal with the intelligence, and the paper rustled nervously in his fingers as he read; but the news amounted to little, after all.

"For fear dear Sophie and you should feel anxious about Mr. Bressant, I will tell you all I know of his absence," said the letter. "A telegram came for him yesterday morning about ten. Joanna, the servant, who took it up to him, says Mr. Reynolds told her it was from New York. So I suppose some friend there--you will probably be able to say who--has been taken very dangerously ill, or perhaps is dead. The summons must have been very urgent, for he left his room not ten minutes afterward, and took the half-past ten o'clock train down.

"I feel sure he will be back by to-morrow evening. Don't let your daughters fail to be here to meet him."

After reading this, and without pausing to indulge in casuistry, Professor Valeyon betook himself straight to Sophie's chamber.

"You've heard something!" said she, in a low, assured tone the moment he entered. "A letter? give it me--I would rather read it myself."

The professor gave it into her hand, with a smile; but Sophie's eyes were too deep and dark for any smile to glimmer through. As she opened it he turned his back upon her, and saw out of the window the sinking sun redden the snow-covered hill-top above the road.

"Yes, I'm sure he will be back to-morrow," said Sophie's quiet voice after a minute or two. She made no comment on his having allowed any thing to take him away at such a time--on the eve of his marriage--without first sending word to her; but gave Abbie's letter back into her father's keeping, and lay with closed eyes. He sat down in the chair by the bedside, and presently noticed that she lay more peacefully, and breathed inaudibly and easily, and that the feverish flush was leaving her cheeks. A slight moisture, too, made itself perceptible on her forehead.

"Her life is in this fellow's hand!" thought the professor, and he trembled to his very heart, but dared not ask himself wherefore.

"Do you really think it would hurt me to sew, dear papa?" said she, at length, looking up from her pillow.

"Better let sewing and every thing else alone for the present, my dear; it'll be enough work to get all well again by next Sunday."

Sophie sighed. "I did so want to finish my wedding-dress all myself," said she. "It needs only a few hours' work now, and Cornelia is so busy on her own account, it's hard to ask her. Oh, yes! dear papa, I know how glad she'd be to help me," she added quickly, seeing the old gentleman's eyebrows meet, and his forehead redden.

"I should hope she would! Must be very busy if she hasn't time to do so much as that!" growled he. "I'll send her up to you, my dear."

"Papa!" said Sophie, calling him back from the door; and it was not until she had possession of his hand and was holding it against her cheek that she went on. "Don't let the wedding be put off, if I shouldn't be able to sit up on Sunday. I'll be carried down into the guest-chamber, where he was ill for so long. Don't--papa, I know you won't think hardly of me; but I feel a kind of superstition about that particular day and hour: that if all is not done then, it never will be. Am not I foolish? But do let it be so, and never mind wisdom!"

There was a vein of strenuous earnestness only partly concealed beneath her words and manner, which the gruff old gentleman, who was as sensitive as a photographic plate, where his affections were concerned, did not fail to note. He kissed her on both cheeks--a fully sufficient answer to her request, and shuffled out of the room in his old slippers; which, thanks to Sophie's filial attentions, still held together with dying faith fulness.

The rest of the day the two sisters passed together--Cornelia working upon her sister's wedding-dress, and Sophie guiding her by directions and suggestions. Not since they first began to grow apart, had there been between them so great an appearance of sisterly love and cordiality. Yet, if Cornelia allowed herself to think at all, it must have seemed, in the light of her purpose regarding Bressant, as if she was preparing a shroud rather than a wedding-garment. Or, perhaps, as she observed the change which even so brief and light an illness had made in Sophie's delicate face, there may have lurked, in the secret places of her mind, a darker and guiltier thought than that. But let not our condemnation be too unconditional, lest the precedent come home, some day, to ourselves. It may astonish us, hereafter, to discover how many of our most respectable acquaintances are murderers--only in thought!

But Sophie's condition seemed steadily to improve, and, by the morning of the 30th, the professor apprehended no danger but from imprudence. That she should attend Abbie's party was, of course, out of the question; but there was no longer any obstacle in the way of Cornelia's availing herself of the entertainment, if she were so inclined.

Deadly and immitigable as woman's purpose is often represented to be, it may, especially before she becomes thoroughly hardened to crime, be swayed by shades of feeling or sentiment which would appear, to a man, ridiculously trifling, and which, indeed, she could not herself explain or calculate upon; and there is the more likelihood of this, in proportion to the depth to which her emotions and affections are involved in the affair. As to Cornelia, there are no means of determining whether she ever wavered in her designs against her sister's happiness, and her friend's constancy, or not; she, at any rate, decided to go to the ball, and even condescended to accept Mr. Reynolds's tender of his escort thither. There are a host of respectable motives always on hand for such occasions, and Cornelia might be going either from a curiosity to find out whether Bressant would return, and in order, if so, to bring her sister the latest news; or, to obtain relief from the monotony of home-life; or, to oblige Abbie, who counted upon her appearance; or, to display her ball-dress, cut after the latest New-York pattern; or, all these small matters may have been the wheels whereon rolled the invisible car, but for which they would not have existed.

As she was attiring herself, Sophie, who was seated in her deep invalid-chair, looking at her, was seized by an uncontrollable longing to put on her wedding-dress, and satisfy her mind as to its being a good fit. There it lay, upon the sofa, and nothing could be easier than just to slip into it. Cornelia, absorbed in her own crowded thoughts, never dreamed of opposing the idea, and lent all necessary assistance to carry it out. It was not until Mr. Reynolds had sent up word that the sleigh waited at the door, and, gathering up her cloak and tippet, she had kissed Sophie, left her, and was hurrying down-stairs with rustling skirts, that she realized that she had given her parting salute to one dressed as a bride!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A DISAPPOINTMENT.

There could not have been a better night for sleighing. The temperature had risen considerably since the storm, and the snow, which had fallen to the depth of a foot, was already packed down hard upon the road, so that the runners seldom sank beneath the surface. Moreover, there was a full moon, just pushing its deep orange circumference above the horizon. It had chanced to come up just where a black skeleton forest stood out against the sky, encouraging the fancy that it had somehow got entangled in the branches, and had grown red in the face from struggling to get out. But, ere the young people reached the scene of the entertainment, the struggle was over; the perfect circle was calmly and radiantly uplifting itself above the world, far beyond the reach of the outstretched arms of the gnarled and black-limbed forest; yet did the dark earth benefit by its defeat, in the chaste illumination which descended upon its wintry countenance.

Mr. Reynolds was perfectly happy; it is pleasant to reflect how small an amount of bliss can overflow some souls. Cornelia was brief but kind in her answers to his turbid and confused pourings forth; not that she paid heed to any thing the poor fellow said--she was only occasionally aware of his presence. Her mind was revelling in dreams of heated and exalted imagination; she was filled with inspiration, as with the rich, palpitating blast of a mighty organ; but the tumultuous chorus of her thoughts produced upon her an effect of magnetism which found its expression in a gentle graciousness of words and manner.

She had made up her mind that the first person she should meet would be Bressant; and, so full did she feel of victorious power, it seemed as if, with scarcely a conscious effort, she could overbear and bring him to her feet. Yes, and dictate the terms upon which she would consent to receive his homage. What a pity that the key-notes of so few natures correspond, at the critical moment, with our own; and that Providence sees fit to forward, by even negative help, so small a proportion of our superbly-conceived plans!

It was half-past eight when they drew up at the boarding-house door. No sooner had Cornelia set foot within the threshold, and caught sight of Abbie's face, than it was borne in upon her that Bressant was not there; and the former, after questioning her about Sophie's non-appearance, confirmed her fear. He had not come, nor was it now probable that he would arrive before morning. It would have been useless to expect him by the late train, due at half-past ten, since, to avail himself of that, it would be necessary to make a difficult connection by walking two or three miles from one railway to another.

After climbing to such a height, it was terrible to fall. Cornelia had not allowed herself to anticipate the disaster, precisely because it was so crashing. In a moment the great, rainbow-tinted bubble of her hope and imagination had burst, leaving only a bitter and unpleasant sense of the paltry and unclean materials--the soap-suds and clay-pipe--wherewith it had been created.

Furthermore, the polite fictions which she had lubricated her conscience withal, regarding her desires and intentions, were shown up at precisely their true value, and a very discreditable spectacle they made. Nothing is more exasperating after a failure than to be stared out of countenance by the unworthy means we have employed. During her progress up-stairs to the dressing-room, and brief stay there, Cornelia had ample leisure to review her thoughts and deeds during the latter months of her life. What a waste of time, opportunity, and emotion! It was a tragedy of ridicule and a farce of profound pathos.

Her perception of these things was assisted by the depression which reacted upon her previous excitement: it had an embarrassing way of presenting, in the clearest colors, whatever in her conduct had been most unwise and indefensible. She could have borne it easily had there been as much as one stirring struggle for victory, even had the struggle resulted in defeat. Her state of mind might have borne analogy to his who, having deeply caroused overnight in celebration of some glorious triumph, learned, upon coming to his racked and tortured senses the next day, that it was a triumph for the other side.

Had the sense of despair been less overwhelming, had Cornelia been merely disappointed, rage would have taken the place of depression, and her thoughts would have run in far different channels. But there was no hope: this was her last chance of all: hereafter a rampart would be erected against her, which she neither was able nor dared to scale. There was no element in her position that could make it endurable, and yet there was no escape. She had not enough spirit of enterprise left to return home at once, but yielded herself with torpid insensibility to whoever chose to make a suggestion. She wonderingly speculated as to how she had ever been able to originate an idea herself.

The evening dragged its slow length along, and dragged Cornelia with it. To be where she was, was insupportable; but to go back to the Parsonage was worse still; and the thought of the solitary drive thither with the overflowing Mr. Reynolds filled her with a nauseating pain of anticipation.

It could not have been far from midnight when she awoke to a sense of being alone and not far from the side-door into the yard. Her partner--whoever he was--had gone to get her some ice-cream or a cup of coffee. Cornelia did not wait for his return, but walked quickly and unobserved to the door, which stood a few inches ajar, opened it, passed through, and stood in the unconfined air. The keen intensity of the tonic made her nostrils ache, and her uncovered bosom heave. She unbuttoned one of her gloves, and, taking some snow in her hand, pressed it to her warm temples, and then let it drop shivering into her breast.

"It must feel like that to die, I suppose," thought she. "If I were Sophie, now, that snow would be the death of me in two days: as it is, I shall only have a cold in the head to-morrow. There seems to be no reason in these things."

A dark figure turned the farther corner of the house, and came ploughing through the snow immediately under the eaves, dragging one hand along the clapboards as it came. The crunching of the snow caught Cornelia's ears, and she turned and recognized the figure in half a breath. The great height, the massive breadth, the easy, springing tread--it was Bressant from head to foot. He was buttoned up in a short pea-jacket, and there was a round fur cap on his head. As Cornelia turned upon him, he stopped a moment, standing quite motionless, with the fingers of one hand resting on the side of the house. Then he came close up to her and grasped her wrist with his gloved hand.

"Where is Sophie?" demanded he in his rapid, muffled voice.

"She's ill: she caught cold: she's at home," answered Cornelia, who, at the first recognition, had felt a kind of twang through all her nerves, and was now trying to control the effects of the shock. There was something queer in Bressant's manner--in the way he looked at her.

"But you came," rejoined he, stooping down and peering into her beautiful, troubled face. He broke into a laugh, which terrified Cornelia greatly, because he laughed so seldom. "One might know you'd come. You thought I'd be here: you came to see me, and here I am. Will Sophie get well?"

"Oh, yes! she was much better. When I left she had on her--wedding-dress."

Bressant drew in his breath hissingly between his teeth, and his fingers tightened a moment round Cornelia's wrist. The pain forced a sob from her and turned her lips pale. He paid no attention to her, presently dropped her wrist, and put his hands behind him, grinding the snow beneath his heel, and looking down.

"Whom is she going to marry?" was his next question, asked without raising his head.

"You!" exclaimed Cornelia, in astonishment and fear. The answer sprang to her lips without forethought or reflection, so much had the strange question startled her.

But he again stooped down and peered into her eyes, watching the effect of his words on her as he spoke them.

"No, no! I am not he who promised to marry her. She wouldn't have me, if I asked her: she don't know me. I'm going to marry some one else. _She'll_ love me, no matter who I am. Shall I tell you her name?"

Cornelia could only shiver--shiver--with dry mouth and dilated eyes. Bressant put his hand on her shoulder, and drew her forward a step or two, so that the white moonlight fell upon her.

"Cornelia Valeyon is her name," said he, and then, as she remained rigid, he bent forward, with a whispered laugh, and kissed her on the face.

"There! now we belong to each other--a good match, aren't we? Quick! now; run into the house, and get your things on. You must walk home with me, and we'll arrange every thing. Go! I shall wait for you here."

She reentered the house, cold and dizzy, just as her partner arrived with the coffee. She explained--what scarcely needed to be told--that she felt faint: she must go up-stairs. In three minutes she had put her satin-slippered feet into a pair of water-proof overshoes, pinned up her trailing skirts, thrown on her long wadded mantle, with sleeves and hood, and had got down-stairs again before "assistance" could arrive. All the time, there was a burning and tingling where his lips had been, but she would not put up her hand to touch the spot, and relieve the sensation. It was, in a manner, sacred to her; albeit the sanctity was largely mingled with bewilderment, remorse, and fear. When she came out, Bressant was standing where she had left him, tossing a couple of snow-balls from one hand to another. He dropped them as she approached, and brushed the snow from his gloves. She took the arm he offered her--timidly, and yet feeling that it was all in the world she had to cling to. It was true--by that kiss she belonged to him, for it had made her a traitor to all else on whom she had hitherto had a claim. Yet upon how different a footing did they stand with one another from that which she had prefigured to herself! This was he whom she was to have brought vanquished to her feet! With one motion of his strong, masculine hand he had swept away all her fine-spun cobwebs of opportunity and method, and had laid his clutch upon the very marrow of her soul. But though she had lost the command, she was party, if not principal, to the guilt. It was he who had taken fire from her.

"You remember last summer," said he, "that night when an arch was in the sky? We didn't understand one another then, and I didn't understand myself. But, during the last day or two, I've been thinking it all over. I've had too good an opinion of myself all along."

"What is it that you've been thinking?" asked Cornelia, feeling repelled, and yet driven, by a piteous necessity, to know all the contents, good or bad, of this heart which was her only possession.

"Of all that had been said or done this last half-year. There's nothing you care for more than me, is there?" he demanded, concentrating the greatest emphasis into the question.

"If you care for me--if I can be every thing to you"--Cornelia's voice was broken and tossed upon the uncontrolled waves of fighting emotions, and she could give little care to the form and manner of her speech.

"I love you--of course I love you!--what else is there for me to do? But I've been all this time trying to find out what love was. I thought I loved Sophie, you know."

Bressant's strange words and altered manner dismayed Cornelia. What was the matter with him? She could not get it out of her head that some awful event must have happened, but she knew not how to frame inquiries. Bressant continued--a determined levity in his tone was yet occasionally broken down by a stroke of feeling terribly real:

"I was a great fool--you should have told me; you knew more about it than I did. It was my self-conceit--I thought nothing was too good for me. When I saw you I thought you were the flower of the world, so I wanted you. Well--you are--the flower of the world!"

"He does love me!" said Cornelia to herself, and she knew a momentary pang of bliss which no consideration of honor or rectitude had power to dull or diminish.

"But, afterward," he went on, his voice lowering for an instant, "I saw an angel--something above all the flowers of this world--and I was fool enough to imagine she would suit me better still. You never thought so, did you, Cornelia?" he added, with a half laugh; "well--you should have told me!"

How he dragged her up and down, and struck her where she was most defenseless! Did he do it on purpose, or unconsciously?

"I mistook worship for love--that was the trouble, I fancy. Luckily, I found out in time it won't do to love what is highest--it can only make one mad. Love what you can understand--that's the way! See how wise I've become."

Bressant's laugh affected Cornelia like a deadly drug. Her speech was fettered, and she moved without her own will or guidance.

"I found out--just in time--that I needed more body and less soul--less goodness and--more Cornelia!" he concluded, epigrammatically.

So this was her position. It could hardly be more humiliating. Yet how could she rebel? for was not the yoke of her own manufacture? Indeed, had she been put to it, she might have found it a difficult matter to distinguish between the actual relation now subsisting between Bressant and herself, and that which she had been, for months past, striving to effect. He had met her half-way, that was all.

But surely it was only during this absence that this idea of abandoning Sophie, and turning to herself, had occurred to him. Half as a question, half as an exclamation, the words found their way through Cornelia's twitching lips--

"What has happened to you since you went away?"

"Oh! since we love each other, there's no use talking about that at present. If I had any idea of marrying Sophie, now, I should have to go and tell her every thing. It's so convenient to be certain that _nothing_ can change your love for me, Cornelia! No, no! I wouldn't be so suspicious of you as to tell you now."

"When am I to know, then?" she asked, fearful of she knew not what.

"After we're married, there shall be a clearing up of it all. You'll be much amused! By-the-way, I found out one queer thing--what my real name is!"

"Your real name!"

"Yes--who I am; you know I said I wasn't the same who was engaged to marry Sophie. Well, I'm not; he was a myth--there was no such person. I always thought 'Bressant' was an _incognito_, didn't you? But it turns out to be the only name I have! I hope you like it; do you think 'Mrs. Bressant' sounds well?"

"What does all this mean? What are you going to do with me? Are you making a sport of me?" cried Cornelia, clasping both hands over Bressant's arm, in a passion of helplessness. Much as she loved life, she would, at that moment, have died rather than feel that she was ridiculed and deserted by him.