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In the earnestness of her speech, involuntary gestures accompanied her words; free from all exaggeration, and so truly and gracefully fitted to her meaning as to be virtually invisible. But Bressant was not won by it: his expression grew more ugly and repellent with every successive sentence.
And yet what she says at the end it sounds more like a threat she knows she can fulfil than an attempt to humbug." Bressant took his right hand from his forehead, and tapped with his finger on the envelope as he repeated the words: "If this is enough convinces you without your requiring proof it would be much pleasanter for you, and a great relief to me. Oh! beyond words!
He wished not to be seen or heard by anybody; but it happened that Abbie saw him, and the sight partly alarmed and partly relieved her. She could now account for the mysterious disappearance of Cornelia some hours before. But why had Bressant returned so secretly? and why were his movements all so surreptitious? Something must be out of order, either at the Parsonage or elsewhere.
So habitual was the woman's self-control, however, that these symptoms, whatever they betokened, were repressed and annulled, till none, save a particularly sharp-sighted person, would have noticed them. Bressant was thinking only of Professor Valeyon, and would scarcely have troubled himself, in any case, about the neuralgic spasms of his landlady.
As he did so, she could not help a slight thrill of dismay. He was so very big, and took up so much room! Bressant sat looking straight before him, and said nothing. Stealing a side-glance at him, Cornelia was possessed by an absurd fancy that he was alarmed at his position.
Bressant paced restlessly up and down his small room, stopping every minute or so to bend over the flower-pots in the window, or take a sniff from the bouquet on the table. His cheeks and forehead were flushed, and his eyes very brilliant. His lips worked incessantly against one another, and he held his hands now clasped behind his back, now thrust into the pockets of his coat.
The plaster walls were ornamented by many-colored railway cards, and by a fly-spotted and dusty map. A clock was fastened over the door. After considerable questioning and delay, the man finally announced his entire ignorance in the matter; and Bressant was just about to make him a sharp rejoinder, when his eyes happened to fall upon the map.
"No wonder he looked at me as if I were a mammoth squash, or something. I'm going down in the garden to pluck a tea-rose bud," added she aloud. "Won't you come?" "Yes," said Bressant, following her down the glistening granite steps with an air of half-puzzled admiration.
"Stop! let me alone! let me alone! will you?" growled Bressant, speaking thickly and disjointedly, like one just recovering from a fainting-fit, but with unmistakable signs of ill-temper. "Thank God! you're alive, my boy," said the professor, too much relieved to notice the tone. "Cornelia, my dear, run to the house, and get Michael and the wheelbarrow.
No one but God can know how delicate are the petals of his flowers, nor on what depend their bloom and fragrance. Hearts are sacred things; we should beware of meddling, not alone with others' but with our own. Bressant was in the habit of spending three hours every afternoon at the Parsonage.
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