ed the central and
crowning ornament of the voluptuous and lovely woman.

"There!" ejaculated she, with a smile which did not part her lips, but
seemed to draw her dark eyebrows a little closer together.

"Strange I'm so quiet!" she mused, as she walked slowly to the door.
"What an ordeal I have to go through! I must sit down with Sophie, and
papa, and--him: listen to all the particulars, ask all the proper and
necessary questions, smile and laugh; and it would be well, I suppose,
to rally the lovers archly on the ardor of their affection, and the
suddenness of the consummation. Better still, I can laughingly allude to
my own prior claim--suggest that I feel hurt at being distanced and left
out in the cold by that demure little younger sister of mine! Oh, yes!"
exclaimed Cornelia, clapping her hands together, "that will cap the
climax; what fun!"

Here the tea-bell rang. Cornelia put her hand on the door-handle.

"Of course, nobody could help loving Sophie--such a dear, simple, good
little thing! and why not he as well as any one else? and, of course, in
that case, Sophie must think that she loved him back--thought it her
duty, too, perhaps! Nobody was to blame."

"But he was mine first!" she whispered to her heart, again and again,
and she found a disastrous solace in each repetition. She flung open the
door, and ran down-stairs with a light step, a smiling face, and a
fierce, tight heart.

CHAPTER XXII.

LOCKED UP.

Bressant's health was now sufficiently established to warrant his moving
back to Abbie's. Not that he was particularly anxious to go, but he had
no pretext for staying, and his engagement to Sophie was a reason in
etiquette why he should not. Accordingly, about a week after Cornelia's
arrival, such of his books and other property as had been sent to him
from the boarding-house were packed in a box, which was hoisted in to
the back of the wagon; he and Professor Valeyon mounted the seat, and,
with Dolly between the shafts, they set out for the village.

"I suppose you remember a talk I had with you the first evening you came
here?" said the old gentleman, as they turned the corner in the road.
"Told you it would be work enough for a churchful of missionaries to
make any thing out of you, in the way of a minister, and so on?"

"Very well; I remember the whole conversation," said Bressant, pushing
up his beard into his mouth and biting it.

"Thanks to God--I can't take any credit to mysel