The peril in which she stood but kindled in her heart a fiery depth of passion, such as overtopped and tamed the very terrors of her position. Because she must lose the world to gain her end, that end was exalted, in her thought, above a hundred worlds. The faculties of her soul, which, in her time of innocence and indifference, had been dormant--half alive--now sprang at once into an exalted, fierce vitality. The hour of evil found Cornelia a creature of far higher powers and more vigorous development than she could ever, under any other conditions, have attained. She showed most gloriously and greatly, when illuminated by that lurid light whose flame was fed by all that was most gentle, womanly, and sweet within her. She looked nearest to a goddess, when she needed but one step to be transformed into a demon.
In following out her psychological progress, we have necessarily outstripped, to some extent, the sober pace of the narrative. It was about the first of December that rumors began to be circulated in the village of an approaching ball at Abbie's. It was to be the grandest--the most complete in all its appointments--of any that ever had been given there. It was looked upon, in advance, as the great event of the year. Real, formal invitations were to be sent out, printed on a fold of note-paper, with the blank left for the name, and "R.S.V.P."--whatever that might mean--in the lower left-hand corner. There were to be six pieces in the band; dancing was to be from eight to four, instead of from seven to twelve, as heretofore; and the toilets, it was further whispered, were to be exceptionally brilliant and elaborate. Certain it was that dress-making might have been seen in progress through the windows of any farm-house within ten miles; and at the Parsonage no less than elsewhere.
Sophie had an exquisite taste in costume, though her ideas, if allowed full liberty, were apt to produce something too fanciful and eccentric to be fashionably legitimate. But, let a dress once be made up, and happy she whose fortune it was to stand before Sophie and be touched off. Some slight readjustment or addition she would make which no one else could have thought of, but which would transform merely good or pretty into unique and charming. Sophie had the masterly simplicity of genius, but was generally more successful with others than with herself.
As for Cornelia, she knew how she ought to look; but how to effect what she desired was sometimes beyond her ability. She had little faculty for detail, relying on her sister to supplement this deficiency. She was more of a conformist than was Sophie in regard to toilet matters; and--an important virtue not invariable with young ladies--she always could tell when she had on any thing becoming.
One December day, when a broad, pearl-gray sky was powdering the motionless air with misty snow, the sisters sat together at their sewing in what had been known, since his accident, as Bressant's room. There was no stove; but a rustling, tapering fire was living its ardent, yellow, wavering life upon the brick hearth, and four or five logs of birch and elm were reddening and crackling into embers beneath its intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank of snow that lay, light and round, upon the outside sill and the slighter ridges that sloped and clung along the narrow foothold of the window-pane frames. Presently Cornelia got up from the low stool on which she had been sitting, and, having slipped on the waist of her new dress, invited Sophie's criticism with a courtesy.
"Dear me, Neelie!" exclaimed she, in gentle consternation, "are you going to wear your corsage so low as that?"
"Yes, why not?" returned Cornelia, with a kind of defiance in her tone; "it's the fashion, you know. Oh, I've seen them lower than that in New York!"
"But there'll be nothing like it here, dear, I'm sure. Think how frightened poor Bill Reynolds will be when he sees you."
Sophie looked up, expecting to see her sister smile; but she, having in view the opinion of quite another person than Mr. Reynolds, remained unusually grave.
"Don't mind me, dear," Sophie added, fearing she might have given offense. "You know I'd rather see you look well than myself, especially as I may not be here to see you another year."
She drew a long breath of happy regret, thinking of what was to follow the next day but one after the ball.
Cornelia, looking into the fire, her pure, round chin resting on her bent forefinger, started, as the same thought entered her mind. Was it so near, though--that marriage? or would an eternity elapse ere Bressant and Sophie called one another husband and wife?
"Are you glad the day comes so soon, Sophie?"
"Yes," answered she, with quiet simplicity. "A few weeks ago it frightened me--it seemed so near; but not now. I love him much more than I did--that's one reason. And he loves me more, I think."
"Loves you more! why? what makes you think so?" demanded Cornelia, a frown quivering across her forehead.
"His manner tells me so: he's more subdued and gentle; almost sad, indeed, sometimes. He's lived so much in his mind since we were engaged: I can see it in his face, and hear it in his voice, even. He's not like other men; I never want him to be; he has all that makes other men worth any thing, and still is himself. He has the greatest and the warmest heart that ever was; but when he first came here he had no idea how to use it, nor even what it was for."
"And he's found out now, has he?"
"Yes--especially in the last few weeks. Before, he used sometimes to be violent, almost--to lose command of himself; but he never does now."
"But doesn't he ever tell you that he loves you more than ever?"
"We understand each other," replied Sophie, with a slight touch of reserve, for she thought she was being questioned further than was entirely justifiable. "Nothing he could say would make me feel his love more than I do."
Cornelia smiled to herself with secret derision; she imagined she could give a more plausible reason for her sister's reticence. She took off her "waist" and resumed her place upon the stool.
"What should you do, Sophie, supposing something occurred to prevent your marriage?"
"Die an old maid," returned she: not treating the question seriously, but as a piece of Cornelia's wanton idleness.
Cornelia began to laugh, but interrupted herself, half-way, with a sob. She was seized by a fantasy that if Sophie died an old maid her sister would have been the cause of it--would be a murderess! The sudden jarring of this idea--tragical enough, even without the ghastly spice of reality that there was about it--against the ludicrous element with which tradition flavors the name of old maid--caught the young woman at unawares, and threw her rudely out of her nervous control. It was a result which could scarcely have happened, had she been less morbidly and unnaturally excited and strained to begin with; as it was, it may have been an outbreak which had long been brewing, and to which Sophie's answer had but given the needful stimulus.
The sob was succeeded by a convulsion of painful laughter, that would go on the more Cornelia tried to stop it. At last, in gasping for breath, the laughter gave way to an outburst of tears and sobs, which seemed, in comparison, to be a relief. But at the first intermission, the discordant laughter came again: she hid her face in her hands, and made wild efforts to control herself: she slipped from her stool, and flung herself at full length upon the floor. Now, the paroxysms of laughing and crying came together, her body was shaken, strained, and convulsed in every part: she was breathless, flushed, and faint. But it seemed as if nothing short of unconsciousness could bring cessation: the sobs still tore their way out of her bosom, and the laughter came with a terrible wrench that was more agonizing to hear than a groan.
Sophie had never seen Cornelia in hysterics before, and was tortured with alarm and apprehension. She knew not what to do, for every attempt she made to relieve her, seemed only to make her worse.
"Let me call papa--he must