One December day, when a broad, pearl-gray sky was powdering the motionless air with misty snow, the sisters sat together at their sewing in what had been known, since his accident, as Bressant's room. There was no stove; but a rustling, tapering fire was living its ardent, yellow, wavering life upon the brick hearth, and four or five logs of birch and elm were reddening and crackling into embers beneath its intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank of snow that lay, light and round, upon the outside sill and the slighter ridges that sloped and clung along the narrow foothold of the window-pane frames. Presently Cornelia got up from the low stool on which she had been sitting, and, having slipped on the waist of her new dress, invited Sophie's criticism with a courtesy.
"Dear me, Neelie!" exclaimed she, in gentle consternation, "are you going to wear your corsage so low as that?"
"Yes, why not?" returned Cornelia, with a kind of defiance in her tone; "it's the fashion, you know. Oh, I've seen them lower than that in New York!"
"But there'll be nothing like it here, dear, I'm sure. Think how frightened poor Bill Reynolds will be when he sees you."
Sophie looked up, expecting to see her sister smile; but she, having in view the opinion of quite another person than Mr. Reynolds, remained unusually grave.
"Don't mind me, dear," Sophie added, fearing she might have given offense. "You know I'd rather see you look well than myself, especially as I may not be here to see you another year."
She drew a long breath of happy regret, thinking of what was to follow the next day but one after the ball.
Cornelia, looking into the fire, her pure, round chin resting on her bent forefinger, started, as the same thought entered her mind. Was it so near, though—that marriage? or would an eternity elapse ere Bressant and Sophie called one another husband and wife?
"Are you glad the day comes so soon, Sophie?"
"Yes," answered she, with quiet simplicity. "A few weeks ago it frightened me—it seemed so near; but not now. I love him much more than I did—that's one reason. And he loves me more, I think."