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After this little speech, Sophie became very silent, being, in truth, too weak and worn out to speak or move, save at long, and ever longer, intervals. All that night, Professor Valeyon carried an aching and mistrustful heart; but Cornelia had a red spot in either cheek, never fading nor shifting.
Meanwhile, every word she had uttered had been an indirect, but none the less telling blow upon a sore place in his own conscience. It was long since Professor Valeyon had stood so low in his own self-esteem.
Cornelia, already inclined to allow her companion every thing, would have seen nothing unbecoming in his being of the same mind himself. He could scarcely value himself so high as she. Meanwhile Professor Valeyon, having won his game of backgammon, hunted up his hat, made his adieux, and went to the shed for his wagon.
Professor Valeyon paused in his soliloquy, like a man who has turned into a closed court under the impression that it is a thoroughfare, and stared down with upwrinkled forehead at the sole of the kicked-off slipper, indulging the while in a mental calculation of how many days it would take for the hole near the toe to work down to the hole under the instep, and thus render problematical the possibility of keeping the shoe on at all.
Accordingly, about a week after Cornelia's arrival, such of his books and other property as had been sent to him from the boarding-house were packed in a box, which was hoisted in to the back of the wagon; he and Professor Valeyon mounted the seat, and, with Dolly between the shafts, they set out for the village.
Professor Valeyon, occupying his usual position, had nearly finished his second pipe. He had thrown off the light linen duster he usually wore, and sat with his waistcoat open, displaying a somewhat rumpled, but very clean white shirt-bosom; and his sturdy old neck was swathed in the white necktie which was the only visible relic of his ministerial career.
The shrubbery partly hid it from view of the balcony, but the small, irregular sound of its continuous fall was audible in the quiet of the summer afternoons. Weak-minded though it was, Professor Valeyon loved to listen to it.
"Very well very well! or perhaps I'd better write to her myself well and as long as you are on your back, there'll be no use in troubling you with business that's certain! And perhaps things may turn out better than they look, in the end." As Professor Valeyon pronounced this latter sentence, he smiled to himself pleasantly and mysteriously.
With the almost impatient quickness which marked every thing he did a quickness which did not seem in any way allied to slovenliness or inaccuracy, however the young man pushed through the gate, which protested loudly against such rough usage, and walked hastily up to the porch-steps. He paused a moment ere ascending. "Are you Professor Valeyon?" he asked.
"Oh, yes; I'm as well as ever. I've had very good nursing." "Yes yes," she said, slowly; "it was better you should be there; you couldn't have been so well cared for here. I told Professor Valeyon so at the time. I knew you'd feel happier there more at home. It's all for the best all for the best, in the end."
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