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Bressant's collar-bone was broken; there were two severe bruises on his leg, though it had escaped fracture; his body in several places was marked with dark contusions, and there was a cut in the back of his head, where he had fallen against a stone.

A fat Irish girl presently appeared, and ushered him in with a stare and a grin, wiping her hands upon her apron. Meanwhile Cornelia, having said a few words to her father to excuse Bressant's unceremonious departure she refrained instinctively from letting him know what had actually taken place bade him good-night, and went up-stairs with a more sober step than was her wont.

The morning following Bressant's arrival was clear and cool. Professor Valeyon looked out of the window of his bedroom, which was at the garden-end of the house, and opposite Cornelia's, and saw the cold, white mists lying in the valley, and the rough hills, like islands, lifting their dark shoulders above it.

"Oh, I'm not angry," faltered poor Cornelia; and then she felt, or seemed to feel, a force drawing her down scarcely perceptible, yet strong as death. She bent her lovely glowing face, with its tearful eyes and fragrant breath, close down to Bressant's.

"No more fitting time, no more fitting time," replied Professor Valeyon. The old gentleman's heart was full; he shifted the reins to his right hand, and laid his left upon Bressant's, which he pressed with much feeling. Perhaps it was of bad omen thus to seal a bargain with the left hand, but no misgivings of the sort troubled the professor.

The powers of a man are never annihilated; if dormant in one direction, they will be active in another; and thus Bressant's passions, naturally deep and violent, being denied legitimate outlet, had given vigor, endurance, and heat of purpose, to the prosecution of his intellectual exercises.

A dog barked sharply at him, as he echoed by, but inaudibly to Bressant's ears. Presently a raised sidewalk divided off from the road, affording a smoother course; the outlying houses of the village slipped past one after another; a white picket-fence twittered indistinguishably by.

Bressant's steps echoed closely back from between the buildings; once he clattered sharply over a stretch of brick sidewalk; once dodged aside to avoid overrunning a dark-figured man. The village was left behind; yonder stood the boarding-house, dimly white and irregular of outline; he remembered it from the glimpse he had had in passing on his way from the depot.

To her, on the other hand, Bressant's well-being would have been paramount to her own, and to be preserved, if need were, at its sacrifice. Even a perception, on her part, of this selfishness in him, would not have alienated her. Selfishness in him she loves does not chill, but augments, a woman's affection.

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.