"Loves you more! why? what makes you think so?" demanded Cornelia, a frown quivering across her forehead.
"His manner tells me so: he's more subdued and gentle; almost sad, indeed, sometimes. He's lived so much in his mind since we were engaged: I can see it in his face, and hear it in his voice, even. He's not like other men; I never want him to be; he has all that makes other men worth any thing, and still is himself. He has the greatest and the warmest heart that ever was; but when he first came here he had no idea how to use it, nor even what it was for."
"And he's found out now, has he?"
"Yes—especially in the last few weeks. Before, he used sometimes to be violent, almost—to lose command of himself; but he never does now."
"But doesn't he ever tell you that he loves you more than ever?"
"We understand each other," replied Sophie, with a slight touch of reserve, for she thought she was being questioned further than was entirely justifiable. "Nothing he could say would make me feel his love more than I do."
Cornelia smiled to herself with secret derision; she imagined she could give a more plausible reason for her sister's reticence. She took off her "waist" and resumed her place upon the stool.
"What should you do, Sophie, supposing something occurred to prevent your marriage?"
"Die an old maid," returned she: not treating the question seriously, but as a piece of Cornelia's wanton idleness.
Cornelia began to laugh, but interrupted herself, half-way, with a sob. She was seized by a fantasy that if Sophie died an old maid her sister would have been the cause of it—would be a murderess! The sudden jarring of this idea—tragical enough, even without the ghastly spice of reality that there was about it—against the ludicrous element with which tradition flavors the name of old maid—caught the young woman at unawares, and threw her rudely out of her nervous control. It was a result which could scarcely have happened, had she been less morbidly and unnaturally excited and strained to begin with; as it was, it may have been an outbreak which had long been brewing, and to which Sophie's answer had but given the needful stimulus.