t of human fruit, purely human, and sane, and comforting. So let
us be cordially thankful to those who furnish matter for sound embracing
laughter.

Cornelia detested gold--entirely on general grounds and for abstract
reasons. Not a word of Mr. Barrett was shaped, even in fancy; but she
interjected to herself, with meditative eye and mouth: "The saints were
poor!" (the saints of whom he had read, translating from that old Latin
book) "St. Francis! how divine was his life!" and so forth, until the
figure of Mr. Penniless Barrett walked out in her imagination clad in
saintly garments, superior not only to his creditor, Mr. Chips, but to
all who bought or sold.

"I have been false," she said; implying the "to him." Seeing him on that
radiant height above her, she thought "How could I have fallen so!" It
was impossible for her mind to recover the delusion which had prompted
her signing herself to bondage--pledging her hand to a man she did not
love. Could it have been that she was guilty of the immense folly, simply
to escape from that piece of coarse earth, Mrs. Chump? Cornelia smiled
sadly, saying: "Oh, no! I should not have committed a wickedness for so
miserable an object." Despairing for a solution of the puzzle, she cried
out, "I was mad!", and with a gasp of horror saw herself madly signing
her name to perdition.

"I was mad!" is a comfortable cloak to our sins in the past. Mournful to
think that we have been bereft of reason; but the fit is over, and we are
not in Bedlam!

Cornelia next wrestled with the pride of Mr. Barrett. Why had he not come
to her once after reading the line pencilled in the book? Was it that he
would make her his debtor in everything? He could have reproached her
justly; why had he held aloof? She thirsted to be scourged by him, to
hang her head ashamed under his glance, and hug the bitter pain he dealt
her. Revolving how the worst man on earth would have behaved to a girl
partially in his power (hands had been permitted to be pressed, and the
gateways of the eyes had stood open: all but vows had been interchanged),
she came to regard Mr. Barrett as the best man on the earth. That she
alone saw it, did not depreciate the value of her knowledge. A goal
gloriously illumined blazed on her from the distance. "Too late!" she put
a curb on the hot courses in her brain, and they being checked, turned
all at once to tears and came in a flood. How indignant would the fair
sentimentalist have been a