Bressant, surprised and defrauded, was about to remonstrate; but ere the words came, he saw Cornelia appear upon the balcony, and he sank back and held his peace.
CHAPTER XX.
BRESSANT CONFIDES A SECRET TO THE FOUNTAIN.
Sophie went flitting up the garden-path toward the house, and in a moment more the sisters were in one another's arms. Bressant, glad of the concealment afforded by the shrubbery, remained gazing moodily at the fountain, his head on his hand. The two girls entered the house, and sat down in the professor's study, where the old gentleman (who had been the first to meet Cornelia) sat enclouding himself with smoke, but betraying no other symptom of his huge delight.
"But how came you to get here so soon, you dear darling?" said Sophie, looking with lighted eyes at her sister. "We thought it would be a week at least."
"Oh, bless your heart, I couldn't wait, you know. So awfully tired I got of seeing new things and people. Dear me!"—and Cornelia threw herself back in her chair and uplifted her gloved hands in a little gesture of ineffability—"you would never imagine what a bore society is, after all."
The professor, from his cloud, cast, unobserved, a glance of quiet scrutiny at his daughter. A certain jaunty embroidery of tone and manner struck him at once—she wasn't quite the same simple little woman who had gone to New York two months ago. Well, well, they would wear off, perhaps, these little affectations; and then, too, it was not to be expected of her that she'd be a girl all her life. They all must needs pass through this stage to something better—or worse: all women of pith and passion like Cornelia.
"How did you leave Aunt Margaret?" inquired he.
"Oh, désolée, because I would go away," replied Cornelia, with a very pretty laugh. "She vowed she could have spared me much better six weeks earlier; for, you see, after I'd learned the ropes, and how to take care of myself, I became, as she expressed it, 'such a dear, sweet, invaluable little attachée.'"