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?