, stepping
daintily yet firmly; it seemed as if the earth were an elastic sphere
beneath her feet, she moving tirelessly onward. She had plucked a branch
of gorgeous leaves from one of the maples, which she brandished about
ever and anon, to keep the flies away. A straw hat, narrow-brimmed,
slanted downward over hair and forehead. Her oval cheeks were more than
usually luminous from exercise; her eyes were bright tawny brown, the
lids shaped in curves, like the edges of a leaf. The vigorous roundness
of her full and perfect figure was hinted here and there through the
light drapery of her dress, as she walked forward. The October breeze
seemed the sweeter for blowing past her.

"You must be rather late--I don't often meet you!" said she, with a
smile which put Bressant traitorously at his ease.

"Early, more than late," responded he, stopping as he saw that she
stopped.

"Are you?--well, then--I don't often see you--would you mind walking
with me just a little way?" and she touched him lightly on the shoulder
with her maple-branch, as with the wand of an enchantress.

He, in obedience rather to the touch than the words, turned about and
walked beside her.

"I've a right to a sister's privileges, you know," continued she,
slipping her hand beneath his arm, and letting it rest upon it.

How very delightful, as well as simple, to solve the problem of their
intercourse on this basis! Bressant did not know how it might feel to
have a sister, but he could, at the moment, imagine nothing more
delightful than to be Cornelia's brother--unless it were to be Sophie's
husband. But to be both!

"Do you know," pursued she, with apparent hesitation, looking up in his
face, and then immediately looking down again, "I've had a notion, since
coming back from New York, that you don't like me so well as you did?"

This might be either audacity or delicacy, as one chose to take it.
Bressant, feeling himself put rather on the defensive, answered hastily
and without premeditation:

"I like you more!"

"Oh! I'm so glad to hear you say so!" exclaimed she warmly, and as she
spoke he felt her hand a little more perceptibly on his arm. "It takes
such a load off my heart! seeing you and Sophie love one another so
much, I couldn't help loving you, too, in my way; and it made me so
unhappy to think I was disagreeable to you."

Bressant was quite unprepared for all this. Whatever had been his
speculations as to the future footing upon wh