road
shoulder. "I would not lose your love for all the world; but I feared
you might be led to something--something that would prevent your loving
either God or me. Promise me something, dear: if you are ever in trouble
or danger, and I'm not with you, come to me! No harm can reach us when
we're together. You need me, and I you."

"I promise," replied Bressant.

In the short silence that followed, Sophie heard, though Bressant could
not, a quick, excited, warbling voice calling her again and again by
name. She released herself from her lover's hold, and sprang up with a
cry of delight.

Bressant, surprised and defrauded, was about to remonstrate; but ere the
words came, he saw Cornelia appear upon the balcony, and he sank back
and held his peace.

CHAPTER XX.

BRESSANT CONFIDES A SECRET TO THE FOUNTAIN.

Sophie went flitting up the garden-path toward the house, and in a
moment more the sisters were in one another's arms. Bressant, glad of
the concealment afforded by the shrubbery, remained gazing moodily at
the fountain, his head on his hand. The two girls entered the house, and
sat down in the professor's study, where the old gentleman (who had been
the first to meet Cornelia) sat enclouding himself with smoke, but
betraying no other symptom of his huge delight.

"But how came you to get here so soon, you dear darling?" said Sophie,
looking with lighted eyes at her sister. "We thought it would be a week
at least."

"Oh, bless your heart, I couldn't wait, you know. So awfully tired I got
of seeing new things and people. Dear me!"--and Cornelia threw herself
back in her chair and uplifted her gloved hands in a little gesture of
ineffability--"you would never imagine what a bore society is, after
all."

The professor, from his cloud, cast, unobserved, a glance of quiet
scrutiny at his daughter. A certain jaunty embroidery of tone and manner
struck him at once--she wasn't quite the same simple little woman who
had gone to New York two months ago. Well, well, they would wear off,
perhaps, these little affectations; and then, too, it was not to be
expected of her that she'd be a girl all her life. They all must needs
pass through this stage to something better--or worse: all women of pith
and passion like Cornelia.

"How did you leave Aunt Margaret?" inquired he.

"Oh, _desolee_, because I would go away," replied Cornelia, with a very
pretty laugh. "She vowed she could have spared me much better six we