Bressant

But Bressant chewed his mustache, and said, hastily, the blood reddening

his face: "No, no! wait--wait till she comes back. She can know it

first, still; but you had better tell her with words. You can see, with

your own eyes, then, how--how it pleases her."

"Yes, that is true," said Sophie, half reluctantly. "Well?"

Bressant lay silent, with a peering, concentrated look in his eyes, his

brows slightly contracted. He must have had an intuitive foreboding that

this matter of the two sisters would cause some difficulty, but he could

hardly as yet have had a distinct understanding of what jealousy meant.

Howbeit, the lovers grew every day more intimate. In the earlier days of

her intercourse with him Sophie had felt an involuntary shrinking from

she knew not what, but this had been entirely overcome, partly by habit,

partly from an unconscious resolve on her part not to yield to it. The

quick, intelligent sympathy of her nature discerned and interpreted the

germs of new ideas and impulses which were struggling into life in

Bressant's mind; she translated to him his better part, and warmed it

with a flood of celestial sunshine.

But the sun which makes flowers bloom brings forth weeds as well, and

it would not be strange if this awakening of Bressant's dormant

faculties should have also brought some evil to the surface which else

might never have seen the light.

In the course of another week or so the invalid had so far improved as

to be able to leave his room, and make short excursions about the house,

and on to the balcony. The feverish and morbid symptoms faded away, and

the indulgence of a Titanic appetite began to bring back the broad, firm

muscles to arms, legs, and body. He felt the returning exhilaration of

boundless vitality and restless vigor which had distinguished him before

his accident.

The summer was now something overworn; the sultry dregs of August were

ever and anon stirred by the cool finger of September. The leaves,

losing the green strength of their blood, changed color and fluttered,

wavering earthward from the boughs whereon they had spent so many

sociable months. The surrounding hills seen from the parsonage-balcony

took on subtle changes of tint; the patches of pine and evergreen showed

out more and more distinctly; the over-ripe grass in the valley lay in

lines of fragrant haycocks.

Every day, in the garden, a greater number of red and yellow leaves

drifted about the paths, or scattered themselves over the flower-beds,

or floated on the surface of the fountain-basin. Little brown birds

hopped backward and forward among the twigs, with quick, jerking tails

and sideway, speculative heads; or upon the ground, pecking at it here

and there with their little bills, as if under the impression that it

was summer's grave, and they might chance to dig her up again. But once

in a while they got discouraged, and took a sudden, rustling flight to

the roof-tree of the barn, seemingly half inclined to continue on

indefinitely southward. Then, a reluctance to leave the old place coming

over them, they would dip back again on their elastic little wings, to

hop and peck anew.