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
