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.