She gave a little laugh as she stood there that made the ear-rings quiver, and parted her lips enough to show that her small white teeth were set edge to edge.
"It can't do any harm," was passing through her mind. "If I'm to be his sister, he ought to like me. It's no use making him detest me. If he loves Sophie so much, what harm can it do for him to be pleased with my beauty? Besides, haven't I a right to my own good looks?"
She kissed her fingers to her reflection, and made a deep courtesy. As she did so, she caught sight of the little petal-less rose-stalk which had fallen out of her traveling-dress on to the floor. She picked it up, and, after turning it idly in her fingers for a moment, she yielded to a sudden fancy, and fastened it into the bosom of her dress; so that this symbol of a body from which the soul had departed formed 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.