While Aunt Margaret, sitting in her boudoir, thus took doubtful and
disconnected counsel with herself, Cornelia was left to manage her
little difficulties as best she might. Being tolerably quick in
observing, and putting things together, and unwilling to trust to
intuitive judgments of what was safe or unsafe in the moral atmosphere,
she set to work with all her wits, and not without some measure of
success, to fathom the secrets of the tantalizing freemasonry which
piqued her curiosity. By listening to all that was said, laughing when
others laughed, keeping silent when she was puzzled, comparing results
and drawing deductions, she presently began to understand a good deal
more than she had bargained for, was considerably shocked and disgusted,
and perhaps felt desirous to unlearn what she had learned.
But this was not so easy. Things she would willingly have forgotten
seemed, for that very reason, to stick in her memory--nay, in some moods
of mind, to appear less entirely objectionable than in others. She had
little opportunity for solitude--to bethink herself where she stood, and
how she came there. During the daytime, there were the young ladies,
here, there, and everywhere; there could be no seclusion. In the
afternoons and evenings some admiring, soft-voiced young gentleman was
always at her side, offering her his arm on the faintest pretext, or
attempting to put it round her waist on no pretext at all; who always
found it more convenient to murmur in her ear, than to speak out from a
reasonable distance; whose hands were always getting into proximity with
hers, and often attempting to clasp them; whose eyes were forever
expressing something earnest or arch, pleading or romantic--though
precisely what, his lingering utterance scarcely tried to define; who
never could "see the harm" of these and many other peculiarities of
behavior; and, indeed it was not very easy to argue about them, although
the young gentlemen never shrank from the dispute, and never failed to
have on hand an inexhaustible assortment of syllogisms to combat any
remonstrance that might be advanced withal; while at the worst they
could always be surprised and hurt if their conduct were called into
question. Well, they appeared to be refined and high-bred. Compare them
with Bill Reynolds! And the flattery of their attention, and the
preference they gave her over the other girls, were not entirely lost
upon Cornelia.
In the absence of both gentlemen and ladies, there, on an
easily-accessible shelf in the library, were those works of Dumas,
Féval, and the rest, to which Cornelia's attention had been indirectly
invited. She had a sound knowledge of the French language, and an
ardent love of fiction, and beyond question the books were of absorbing
interest.
At first, indeed, Cornelia, as she read, would ever and anon blush, and
look around apprehensively, for fear there should be an observer
somewhere; and this, too, at passages which a week before she would have
passed over without noticing, because not understanding them. If any one
appeared, she hid the book away in the folds of her dress, or under the
sofa-cushion, and put on the air of having just awakened from a nap.
By-and-by, however, when she had become a little used to the tone of the
works, and had asked herself, what were the books put there for, unless
to be read, she plucked up courage, as her young friends would have
said--albeit angels might have wept at it--and overcame her notions so
far as to be able to take down from its shelf and become deeply
interested in one of the Frenchiest of the set, while three or four
people were sitting in the library!