Her fruitless call for Bressant seemed quite to exhaust Sophie. For a
long time afterward she hardly opened her mouth, except to swallow some
hot black coffee. The professor sat, for the most part, with his finger
on her pulse, his eyes looking more hollow and his forehead more deeply
lined than ever before, but with no other signs of anxiety or suffering.
Cornelia came in and out--a restless spirit. She awaited Sophie's
recovery with no less of dread than of hope. Her life hung, as it were,
upon her sister's. The moment in which Sophie recovered her faculties
enough to think and speak would be the last that Cornelia could maintain
her mask of honor and respectability, for Cornelia knew that Sophie was
in possession of her secret; she had been up in her room, and the open
window had told the story.
It was a time of awful suspense. Cornelia wished there had been somebody
there to talk with; even Bill Reynolds would have been welcome now. He,
however, had departed long ago, having bethought himself that his horse
was catching its death o' cold, standing out there with no rug on. She
was entirely alone; she hardly dared to think, for fear something guilty
should be generated in her mind; and, though every moment was pain,
without stop or mitigation, every moment was inestimably precious, too;
it was so much between her and revelation. She almost counted the
seconds as they passed, yet rated them for dragging on so wearily.
Every tick of the little ormolu clock marked away a large part of her
life, and yet was wearisome to so much of it as remained. Sometimes she
debated whether she could not anticipate the end by speaking out at
once, of her own free-will; but no, short as her time was, she could not
afford to lose the smallest fraction of it--no, she could not.
Bethinking herself that her father would be lost to her after the
revelation had taken place, Cornelia felt a consuming desire to enjoy
his love to the fullest possible extent during the interval. She wanted
him to call her his dear daughter--to hold her hand--to pat her
check--to kiss her forehead with his rough, bristly lips--to tell her,
in his gruff, kind voice, that she was a solace and a resource to him.
The thousand various little ways in which he had testified his
deep-lying affection--she had not noticed them or thought much of them,
so long as she felt secure of always commanding them--with what
different eyes she looked back upon them now. Oh! if they might all be
lavished upon her during these last few remaining hours or minutes.
Should she not go and sit down at his knee, and ask him to pet her and
caress her?