crashing. In a moment the great, rainbow-tinted bubble of her hope and imagination had burst, leaving only a bitter and unpleasant sense of the paltry and unclean materials--the soap-suds and clay-pipe--wherewith it had been created.
Furthermore, the polite fictions which she had lubricated her conscience withal, regarding her desires and intentions, were shown up at precisely their true value, and a very discreditable spectacle they made. Nothing is more exasperating after a failure than to be stared out of countenance by the unworthy means we have employed. During her progress up-stairs to the dressing-room, and brief stay there, Cornelia had ample leisure to review her thoughts and deeds during the latter months of her life. What a waste of time, opportunity, and emotion! It was a tragedy of ridicule and a farce of profound pathos.
Her perception of these things was assisted by the depression which reacted upon her previous excitement: it had an embarrassing way of presenting, in the clearest colors, whatever in her conduct had been most unwise and indefensible. She could have borne it easily had there been as much as one stirring struggle for victory, even had the struggle resulted in defeat. Her state of mind might have borne analogy to his who, having deeply caroused overnight in celebration of some glorious triumph, learned, upon coming to his racked and tortured senses the next day, that it was a triumph for the other side.
Had the sense of despair been less overwhelming, had Cornelia been merely disappointed, rage would have taken the place of depression, and her thoughts would have run in far different channels. But there was no hope: this was her last chance of all: hereafter a rampart would be erected against her, which she neither was able nor dared to scale. There was no element in her position that could make it endurable, and yet there was no escape. She had not enough spirit of enterprise left to return home at once, but yielded herself with torpid insensibility to whoever chose to make a suggestion. She wonderingly speculated as to how she had ever been able to originate an idea herself.
The evening dragged its slow length along, and dragged Cornelia with it. To be where she was, was insupportable; but to go back to the Parsonage was worse still; and the thought of the solitary drive thither with the overflowing Mr. Reynolds filled her with a nauseating pain of anticipation.
It could not have been far from midnight when she awoke to a sense of being alone and not far from the side-door into the yard. Her partner--whoever he was--had gone to get her some ice-cream or a cup of coffee. Cornelia did not wait for his return, but walked quickly and unobserved to the door, which stood a few inches ajar, opened it, passed through, and stood in the unconfined air. The keen intensity of the tonic made her nostrils ache, and her uncovered bosom heave. She unbuttoned one of her gloves, and, taking some snow in her hand, pressed it to her warm temples, and then let it drop shivering into her breast.
"It must feel like that to die, I suppose," thought she. "If I were Sophie, now, that snow would be the death of me in two days: as it is, I shall only have a cold in the head to-morrow. There seems to be no reason in these things."
A dark figure turned the farther corner of the house, and came ploughing through the snow immediately under the eaves, dragging one hand along the clapboards as it came. The crunching of the snow caught Cornelia's ears, and she turned and recognized the figure in half a breath. The great height, the massive breadth, the easy, springing tread--it was Bressant from head to foot. He was buttoned up in a short pea-jacket, and there was a round fur cap on his head. As Cornelia turned upon him, he stopped a moment, standing quite motionless, with the fingers of one hand resting on the side of the house. Then he came close up to her and grasped her wrist with his gloved hand.
"Where is Sophie?" demanded he in his rapid, muffled voice.
"She's ill: she caught cold: she's at home," answered Cornelia, who, at the first recognition, had felt a kind of twang through all her nerves, and was now trying to control the effects of the shock. There was something queer in Bressant's manner--in the way he looked at her.
"But you came," rejoined he, stooping down and peering into her beautiful, troubled face. He broke into a laugh, which terrified Cornelia greatly, because he laughed so seldom. "One might know you'd come. You thought I'd be here: you came to see me, and here I am. Will Sophie get well?"
"Oh, yes! she was much better. When I left she had on her--wedding-dress."
Bressant drew in his breath hissingly between his teeth, and his fingers tightened a moment round Cornelia's wrist. The pain forced a sob from her and turned her lips pale. He paid no attention to her, presently dropped her wrist, and put his hands behind him, grinding the snow beneath his heel, and looking down.
"Whom is she going to marry?" was his next question, asked without raising his head.
"You!" exclaimed Cornelia, in astonishment and fear. The answer sprang to her lips without forethought or reflection, so much had the strange question startled her.
But he again stooped down and peered into her eyes, watching the effect of his words on her as he spoke them.
"No, no! I am not he who promised to marry her. She wouldn't have me, if I asked her: she don't know me. I'm going to marry some one else. _She'll_ love me, no matter who I am. Shall I tell you her name?"
Cornelia could only shiver--shiver--with dry mouth and dilated eyes. Bressant put his hand on her shoulder, and drew her forward a step or two, so that the white moonlight fell upon her.
"Cornelia Valeyon is her name," said he, and then, as she remained rigid, he bent forward, with a whispered laugh, and kissed her on the face.
"There! now we belong to each other--a good match, aren't we? Quick! now; run into the house, and get your things on. You must walk home with me, and we'll arrange every thing. Go! I shall wait for you here."
She reentered the house, cold and dizzy, just as her partner arrived with the coffee. She explained--what scarcely needed to be told--that she felt faint: she must go up-stairs. In three minutes she had put her satin-slippered feet into a pair of water-proof overshoes, pinned up her trailing skirts, thrown on her long wadded mantle, with sleeves and hood, and had got down-stairs again before "assistance" could arrive. All the time, there was a burning and tingling where his lips had been, but she would not put up her hand to touch the spot, and relieve the sensation. It was, in a manner, sacred to her; albeit the sanctity was largely mingled with bewilderment, remorse, and fear. When she came out, Bressant was standing where she had left him, tossing a couple of snow-balls from one hand to another. He dropped them as she approached, and brushed the snow from his gloves. She took the arm he offered her--timidly, and yet feeling that it was all in the world she had to cling to. It was true--by that kiss she belonged to him, for it had made her a traitor to all else on whom she had hitherto had a claim. Yet upon how different a footing did they stand with one another from that which she had prefigured to herself! This was he whom she was to have brought vanquished to her feet! With one motion of his strong, masculine hand he had swept away all her fine-spun cobwebs of opportunity and method, and had laid his clutch upon the very marrow of her soul. But though she had lost the command, she was party, if not principal, to the guilt. It was he who had taken fire from her.
"You remember last summer," said he, "that night when an arch was in the sky? We didn't understand one another then, and I didn't understand myself. But, during the last day or two, I've been thinking it all over. I've had too good an opinion of myself all along."
"What is it that you've been thinking?" asked Cornelia, feeling repelled, and yet driven, by a piteous necessity, to know all the contents, good or bad, of this heart which was her only possession.
"Of all that
