She laughed in his face, at the same time drawing her hand from his arm,
and stepping away from him. How tantalizingly lovely she looked!
"It won't do to carry the privileges of relationship too far, my dear
sir! at least, not until after you're married. There! go back to your
Sophie--I didn't mean to keep you so long--really! No, no!" as he made
an offer to approach her; "go! and be quick, I advise you. Good-by!"
Bressant, as he walked on to the Parsonage, was possessed by an
undefined conviction that he was learning a great deal not set down in
the books. The page of the passions, once thrown open, seems to comprise
every thing. The world has but one voice for the man of one idea.
Evidently, this man did not comprehend the nature of his position
between these two women. Reason told him it was impossible he could love
both at once; but there her information stopped. His senses assured him
that, with Cornelia, he experienced a vivid rush of emotion, such as
Sophie, strongly as he loved her, never awakened in him; but his senses
could give him no explanation of the fact. His instinct whispered that
he would not have dared, in his most ardent moments, to feel toward
Sophie as he invariably felt toward her sister; but no instinct warned
him of the danger which this implied. A sturdy principle, if it had not
thrown light upon the question, would, at least, have pointed out to him
the true course to adopt; but, unfortunately, principles, and the
impulses which they are formed to control, are neither of simultaneous
nor proportionate growth. Bressant, while partaking so liberally of
emotional food, had quite neglected to provide himself with the
necessary and useful correctives to such indulgences. Thus it happened
that when he arrived, a little past his usual hour, at the
Parsonage-door, his mental digestion was in a very disturbed condition.
The very beauty and purity of the fraternal relation cloaks the
miserable rottenness of the imitation. So innocent does it seem, it
might almost deceive the parties to the deception themselves. "I may
love him, for I'm his sister!" said Cornelia; but could she in reality
have become his sister, she would, beyond all else, have shrunk from it.
"Nothing I do is in itself an impropriety," she could say: but her
secret sense and motive were enough to make the most innocent act
criminal. She closed her ears to the inner voice, and her eyes, looking
at her conduct only through the crimson glass of her desire, pronounced
it good.