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Updated: August 20, 2024
Bressant, too," said she. "She said she'd only heard about him from you, papa; but I thought, sometimes, she must be fibbing. Once in a while, you know, she acted just as if she had forgotten having said she didn't know him. However, that's absurd, of course. By-the-way, where is he? Here still?" "Oh, yes. O Neelie dear, I have such news to tell you.
"Oh, you are hard to please, indeed!" exclaimed Abbie, gazing at him and shuddering. "I pray God your heart is so cold to no one else as to me! Poor Sophie! She would die at one such word." "Don't speak her name," said Bressant, in a tone so stern as to be equivalent to a threat. He held his eyes down, so that the ugly gleam in them was hidden.
By teaching Bressant love, she had, by implication, done him deadly injury, yet was the love itself so pure and genuine as to prompt him to resign its object; he being rendered unworthy of her by that same moral dereliction which she herself had occasioned. But the very quality which enables us to do a noble deed dulls our appreciation of our own praiseworthiness.
There was no time to deliberate; there was nothing she would like so much; she snatched it up without a word and stuck it into her belt. "Good-by!" said she, holding out her hand. Bressant took it, not without difficulty. "I wish you were going to stay," said he, gloomily, "I should be more happy to have you here, than ashamed to need your help."
He would gladly have covered himself up out of sight, but he could not move hand or foot. Cornelia had in her mind a little speech she meant to deliver to Bressant, on the subject of the previous night's event, but, at the critical moment, she felt her courage forsaking her.
"Eighty-one miles, rail," responded the official, as he took and clipped the ticket of the gentleman with the newspaper; "comes shorter by road, seventy-four to seventy-five," and he proceeded down the aisle, snapping up tickets on one side or the other, as a hen does grains of corn. Bressant covered his eyes with his hand, and amused himself by performing a little sum in mental arithmetic.
Neither felt any surprise at what, but a few moments before, both would have deemed an impossibility. The easy, whirling sweep of the motion, not ending nor beginning, seemed, to Bressant as well as to Cornelia, the most natural thing in the world. Beautifully as she danced, he was no whit her inferior. They moved in complete accord. Years of practice could not have made the harmony more perfect.
The Duc replies, "Why did you not say that some one was listening, that some one was hidden?" I exclaimed, "It's Guerard bringing me news!" The public had not time to understand, for Bressant went on quickly, and so saved the situation. After an unenthusiastic call I heard that my mother was better, but that she had had a very serious attack.
Then, clasping her hands, and in a voice of yearning, ineffable tenderness, she added, "Oh, I have prayed for you, and wept for you, and loved you so! For your own sake, my darling, do not use such words to me!" Here she held out her arms, and tears ran hot down her faded cheeks. "Am I not your mother? Are you not my son?" "No!" answered Bressant.
"Wait a moment," said she, with a peculiar grave smile; "I'll bring you your protégé." Bressant was standing in the door-way of an inner room, leaning with the elbow of one arm in the hand of the other, as he pulled at his mustache and twisted the beard on his chin. He looked ill at ease, and as if he rather regretted his intrepidity in coming down.
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