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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XIX.

AN INTERMISSION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I promise," replied Bressant.

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

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



CHAPTER XX.

BRESSANT CONFIDES A SECRET TO THE FOUNTAIN.

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, desolee, 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 attachee.'"

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?"