austible assortment of syllogisms to combat any
remonstrance that might be advanced withal; while at the worst they
could always be surprised and hurt if their conduct were called into
question. Well, they appeared to be refined and high-bred. Compare them
with Bill Reynolds! And the flattery of their attention, and the
preference they gave her over the other girls, were not entirely lost
upon Cornelia.

In the absence of both gentlemen and ladies, there, on an
easily-accessible shelf in the library, were those works of Dumas,
Feval, and the rest, to which Cornelia's attention had been indirectly
invited. She had a sound knowledge of the French language, and an
ardent love of fiction, and beyond question the books were of absorbing
interest.

At first, indeed, Cornelia, as she read, would ever and anon blush, and
look around apprehensively, for fear there should be an observer
somewhere; and this, too, at passages which a week before she would have
passed over without noticing, because not understanding them. If any one
appeared, she hid the book away in the folds of her dress, or under the
sofa-cushion, and put on the air of having just awakened from a nap.
By-and-by, however, when she had become a little used to the tone of the
works, and had asked herself, what were the books put there for, unless
to be read, she plucked up courage, as her young friends would have
said--albeit angels might have wept at it--and overcame her notions so
far as to be able to take down from its shelf and become deeply
interested in one of the Frenchiest of the set, while three or four
people were sitting in the library!

A triumph that! Howbeit, when she went to bed that night there was a
persistent pain of dry unhappiness in her heart, and a self-contemptuous
feeling, which she tried to get the better of by calling it _ennui_. But
in time a kind of hardness, at once flexible and impenetrable, began to
encase her, rendering her course more easy, less liable to
embarrassment, more self-confident than before.

At length a crisis was brought on by the attempt of the boldest of her
admirers to kiss her. She repelled him passionately, facing him with
gleaming eyes, and lips white with anger and disgust. He was surprised,
at first--then angry; but she spoke to him in a way that cowed, and
finally almost made him ashamed of himself. He even went so far,
afterward, as to try to knock a fellow down for speaking disrespectfully
of "Neelie." Fo