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Updated: May 10, 2025
It was a most cheerless room, and no one ever thought of sitting down in it, except at mealtime. I closed the shutters and darkened it to suit my eyes, which ached, and I think must have fallen asleep. These doors were half-way open, and I was roused by voices in the parlor. As soon as I recovered myself from the sudden waking, I recognized Sophie's and then Richard's.
Bressant did not know how it might feel to have a sister, but he could, at the moment, imagine nothing more delightful than to be Cornelia's brother unless it were to be Sophie's husband. But to be both!
How great the trial for a nature delicate and shrinking, like Sophie's, to bear witness before their own father of her sister's sin against herself! But Sophie was as brave as she was feminine and delicate. Cornelia's gratitude, however, was mingled still with a despairing agony, and her life seemed to be escaping from her. If this cup might but pass! "He will not be to me as you are, Sophie.
"Decidedly; as it is, we are a first-class power, owing to Sophie's cleverness and Richard's prudence; my prodigality is just needed to keep us from overrunning the county and proclaiming an empire at the next town meeting. How do you like Sophie, Miss d'Estrée? I know you haven't seen much of her but what you have? Isn't she clever, and isn't she a pretty woman to be nearly thirty-five?"
"I'll tell her you're here," said she, understanding at once. She ran upstairs, and came back telling him to come. "And she's glad, Samuel!" exclaimed the child. "Won't you come, too?" he asked blunderingly. "No, she told me not to," was Sophie's reply. So he went upstairs to Miss Wygant's own sitting room, and found her in a morning gown, even more beautiful than the one she had worn before.
There was at once a comprehensiveness and a particularity in Sophie's gaze which, while humbling and abasing Cornelia, brought a comforting feeling that full justice, upon all points, had been done her in Sophie's mind. There was no lack of charity for her trials and temptations, no vindictiveness.
She knew her father would look upon the matter more from the world's point of view than Sophie did; and it was a curious example of the strength of the material element in Cornelia, that she more feared to meet her father's eye, whom she felt would understand that aspect of her disgrace, than Sophie's, who probably had a more acute and certainly a more exclusive perception of her spiritual accountability.
Looking around the room, and noting the delicate nicety and precision of its condition and arrangement, one would have supposed that Sophie's own hands must have been very lately at work upon it.
He begged to resign his position as aide to the Prince, and returned his wife's dowry. The departure of Sophie's hitherto complacent husband rather embarrassed the Prince. He needed Sophie but felt he could not keep her unattached under his roof and he sent her away but only for a few days. Sophie soon was back again in Chantilly.
In the last few minutes he had developed a sentiment hitherto unknown to him pique! He had been imagining Cornelia in love with him, and angry at his preference for Sophie; whereas, it would now seem that the only reason she cared for him at all, was because he was Sophie's lover: a most correct spirit in her, no doubt; but, instead of being gratified, as was his duty, he felt provoked.
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