in a blaze.
The young man looked as if struck with a new idea. It seemed as if he had not before thought of looking upon the professor as an independent quantity in the affair. The whole episode had presented itself to him as a difficult problem which he was to solve. The accident to himself had been an imperfection in the solution, of which he was deeply ashamed. But he was somewhat consoled by the reflection that the old gentleman had really needed preservation on his own account.
"That does make it better," said he, half to himself, with the first approach to good-humor he had shown since his misfortune.
Cornelia still remained glowing in the door-way, turning the latch backward and forward, not knowing what more to say, and yet unwilling to say nothing more. She did not at all comprehend Bressant's attitude, and therefore admired him all the more. What she could not understand in him was, of course, beyond her scope.
"You may think nothing of it, but I know I--I know we do--I can't say what I want to, and I'm not going to try any more; but I'm sure you know--or, at least, you'll find out some time--in some other way, you know."
Bressant could not hear all this, nor would he have known what it meant, if he had; but he could see that Cornelia was kindly disposed toward him, and was conscious of great pleasure in looking at her, and thought, if she were to touch him, he would get well. He said nothing, however, and presently his bodily pain caused him to sigh and close his eyes wearily. Cornelia immediately kissed her soft fingers to him twice, and then vanished from the room, looking more like a blush than a tea rose. Before long she returned with the sick man's breakfast on a tray.
"Do you like to be nursed?" asked she, as she put the tray on a table, and moved it up to the bedside.
"No!" said Bressant, emphatically, and with an intonation of great surprise.
"Oh! why not?" faltered Cornelia, quite taken aback.
"I hate disabled people; they're monstrosities, and had better not be at all. I wouldn't nurse them."
"You think there's no pleasure in doing things for people who cannot help themselves?" demanded Cornelia, indignantly.
"There can be no pleasure in nursing," reiterated he. "It might be very pleasant to be nursed--by any one who is beautiful--if one did not need the nursing!"
Cornelia was becoming so accustomed to Bressant's undisguised manners that she forgot to be disturbed by this guileless compliment. Many hours afterward, when she was alone in her chamber, the words recurred to her, devoid of the version his manner had given them, and then they brought the blood gently to her cheeks.
"You're very foolish," said she, as she poured out some tea, and cut up a mutton-chop into mouthfuls. "Now, you have to drink this tea, though you wouldn't the last time I poured you out a cup; and I'll give you your chop. Open your mouth."
So the athlete of the day before was obliged to submit to having his tea-cup carried to his lips and tipped for him by a woman, and the chop administered bit by bit on a fork. It was very degrading; but once in a while Cornelia accidentally touched him, or her face, lit up by interest in her occupation, came so near his own that he felt warm and thrilled, and went near to admit it was worth all the broken bones in the world, and the sacrifice of pride accompanying them.
Ere breakfast was over, Professor Valeyon entered with his slippers, his pipe, and a remarkably benevolent expression for one of such impending eyebrows.
"Well, my boy," said he--ever since the accident he had addressed Bressant thus--"you look in a better humor with yourself this morning. You'll be well used to this room before you leave it," he continued, with kindly gravity, as he felt his patient's pulse. "You'll know all about the number and relative position of the bars and bunches of flowers on the wall-paper opposite, and how many feet and inches it is from the window-frame to the room-corner, and which pane of glass is the crookedest, and how much higher one post of your bedstead is than the other; and plenty more things of that kind. And, to tell you the truth, my boy, I don't believe a course of such studies, by way of variety, will do you any harm. Now, let's look at this collar-bone of yours.--O Cornelia! you'd better be finishing your packing, hadn't you?" he added, to his daughter, who was leaning on the back of his chair, sympathizing with the sick man to her heart's content. She walked obediently to the door, but, before she disappeared, turned and sent back a smile charged with all the warmth of her ardent, womanly nature. Bressant got the whole benefit of it; and it lingered with him most of the morning.
"How long must I be here?" inquired he, after Cornelia was gone.
"Three months at least," replied the surgeon; "more if you worry yourself about it."
"Three months!" repeated the young man, aghast. "What's to become of my studies? I can't hold a book; I can't write; I had to have my breakfast fed to me this morning," continued he, biting his mustache and looking away. The professor smiled thoughtfully.
"I have hopes," said he, "that you'll know more about Divinity when you come out of this room than you did before you went into it. We'll see when the time comes."
"I've found out already that my bones are like other men's," remarked Bressant, with a sigh.
"So much the better," returned the old man. "You never would have learned that out of your Hebrew Lexicon. The best way to reach this young fellow's soul is through his body," declared he, silently, to the bandage he was preparing for the broken head. "This is nothing but a blessing in disguise." But he had too much tact to carry the conversation further, and presently left his patient alone to digest his breakfast and the lesson it had inculcated.
This was Cornelia's last day at home; she was to take the eight-o'clock train next morning to the city. The young lady's mood was unequal: sometimes she drooped; anon would break forth into much talk and merriment, which would evaporate almost as quickly as the froth of champagne. This was her first departure from home, and the ease, freedom, and beloved old ways of home-life, assumed more of their true value in her eyes. She had acquired a sentiment of awe for Aunt Margaret's grandeur. She would be obliged to sleep in corsets and high-heeled shoes; everybody would be going through the figures of a stately minuet all day long.
Then she began to feel in advance the wrench of separating from those with whom her life had been spent, and from one other in whose company she had lived more--so it seemed to her--than in all the years since she ceased to be a child. Bressant was very prominent in her thoughts; nor could she be blamed for this, for the short acquaintance bad been emphasized by a disproportional number of memorable events: First, there was the thunder-storm evening by the fountain; afterward, the dance at Abbie's; and, following in quick succession, the celestial arch, the walk homeward, and the catastrophe in which he had borne the chief part. Besides, he was so different from common men.
"So perfectly natural and unaffected," she argued to herself. "He means all he says; of course I shouldn't let him say such things to me as he does if it weren't so; but it would be affectation in me to object to it as it is!"--a most plausible deduction, by-the-way, but dangerous to act upon. To persuade herself that, because he was an exceptional sort of person, his plain way of talking to her was justifiable, was to establish a secret understanding between him and herself, which placed her at a disadvantage to begin with; and unreservedly to accept compliments, even ingenuous ones, was to indulge in a luxury that must ultimately render callous her moral sensitiveness and refinement.
On the other hand, her toleration would be almost certain to have a bad effect upon
