“O Sophie!  Sophie! the day and hour of your marriage!”

Cornelia sank upon her knees, and hid her face upon the edge of the bed.  But Sophie let her hand wander over her head, with a soothing motion.

“No, dear; that’s all over, Neelie dear, you know.  Not the day and hour of my marriage any more.  Neelie, I want to ask you something.”

Cornelia lifted her head from the bedside; then, divining from Sophie’s face, ere it was spoken, what her question was to be, faintness and terror seized upon her, and she clasped her hands over her eyes.  The unexpectedness of Sophie’s first awakening, and her subsequent strange speech concerning Bressant, had driven from Cornelia’s head the matter which had monopolized her thoughts and fears before; and it now recurred to her with an effect almost as overwhelming as if the idea had been a new one.

“I couldn’t do it,” said she, huskily; “it seemed worse than killing myself.  I believe it would have killed me to have stood before him, with his eyes upon my face, and have told him—­told him—­”

“Yes, dear, yes; it must not be you, Neelie.  How is he?  Does he seem well and cheerful?”

“I don’t know—­I’ve hardly dared to look at him, or speak to him.  He’s been lying down, I believe, since you went to sleep.”

“Ask him to come to me,” Sophie said, after a pause.  “I will speak to him; I’ll tell him; it will be best that I should do it; and you will trust me?”

“O Sophie!” was all that Cornelia could say; but it expressed at least the fullness of her heart.  What must be the love and tenderness that could undertake such a task as this!  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.  He will never look at me again.”

“Do not fear,” replied Sophie, with her faint but incomparable smile.  “If I can forgive you, surely he must.  Go and call him, and then stay in your room till he comes to you.”

But Cornelia, as she left the room upon her heavy errand, shook her head, and drew a shivering breath.  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.

As she was beginning to mount the stairs, she met her father already on his way down.  He noticed the wretchedness depicted on her face, and, supposing it to be all on Sophie’s account, did what he could to comfort her.