In the absence of both gentlemen and ladies, there, on an easily-accessible shelf in the library, were those works of Dumas, Féval, 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." For her own part, she locked herself into her room, and cried tempestuously for half an hour; then she spent a still longer time in lying with her heated face upon the pillow, reviewing the incidents of her life since Bressant had entered into it. He was the superior of any man she had met before or since: she was sure of it now; it could no longer be called the infatuation of inexperience. She took herself well to task for the recent laxity and imprudence of her conduct; did not spare to cut where the flesh was tender; and resolved never again to lay herself open to blame.
This was very well, but the mood was too strained and exalted to be depended upon. Cornelia got up from the disordered bed, put it to rights again, washed her stained face carefully, rearranged her hair, and went down-stairs. All that afternoon she was cold, grave, and reserved; inquiries after her health met with a chilling answer, and her friends wisely concluded to leave her malady, whatever it were, to the cure of time. As dinner progressed, Cornelia began to thaw: when Mr. Grumblow, the member of Congress, requested her, with solemn and oppressive courtesy, to do him the honor of taking a glass of wine with him, she responded graciously; and as the toasts circulated, she first looked upon her ideal resolves with good-humored tolerance, and then they escaped her memory altogether. She became once more lively and sparkling, and carried on what she imagined was a very brilliant conversation with two or three people at once. By the time she was ready to retire, she had practised anew the whole list of her lately-abrogated accomplishments; and she wound up by picking the French novel out of the corner into which she had disdainfully thrown it twelve hours before, reading it in bed until she fell asleep, and dreaming that she was its heroine. And yet she had not forgotten to wind up Bressant's watch, and put it in its usual place under her pillow.
It might seem strange that his memory should not have kept her beyond the reach of deleterious influences. But a young girl's love is any thing but a preservative, if it shall yield her, in any aspect, other than such pure and delicate thoughts as she would not scruple to whisper in her mother's ear, or to ask God's blessing on at night. Should there be any circumstance or incident, however seemingly trifling and unimportant, in her reminiscences, which nevertheless keeps recurring to the mind with a slight twinge of regret—a feeling that it would have been just as well had it never happened—then is love a dangerous companion. Gradually does the trifling spot grow upon her; in trying to justify it, she succeeds only in lowering the whole idea of love to its level; and this once accomplished, in all future intercourse with her lover she must be undefended by the shield of her maidenly integrity. And not all men are great enough not to presume on woman's weakness, even though it be that woman, to assert whose honor and purity they would risk their lives against the world.
Some such quality of earthiness Cornelia may have felt in the course of her acquaintance with Bressant, preventing her love from ennobling and elevating her. Alas! if it were so. If she cannot draw a high inspiration from the affection which must be her loftiest sentiment, what shall be her safeguard, and who her champion?
In the course of ten days or a fortnight, Aunt Margaret announced that the condition of her head would admit of traveling, and the long-expected tour began. But the more important consequences of Cornelia's fashionable experiences had already taken place.