Bressant

Sophie had an exquisite taste in costume, though her ideas, if allowed

full liberty, were apt to produce something too fanciful and eccentric

to be fashionably legitimate. But, let a dress once be made up, and

happy she whose fortune it was to stand before Sophie and be touched

off. Some slight readjustment or addition she would make which no one

else could have thought of, but which would transform merely good or

pretty into unique and charming. Sophie had the masterly simplicity of

genius, but was generally more successful with others than with herself.

As for Cornelia, she knew how she ought to look; but how to effect what

she desired was sometimes beyond her ability. She had little faculty for

detail, relying on her sister to supplement this deficiency. She was

more of a conformist than was Sophie in regard to toilet matters;

and--an important virtue not invariable with young ladies--she always

could tell when she had on any thing becoming.

One December day, when a broad, pearl-gray sky was powdering the

motionless air with misty snow, the sisters sat together at their sewing

in what had been known, since his accident, as Bressant's room. There

was no stove; but a rustling, tapering fire was living its ardent,

yellow, wavering life upon the brick hearth, and four or five logs of

birch and elm were reddening and crackling into embers beneath its

intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank

of snow that lay, light and round, upon the outside sill and the

slighter ridges that sloped and clung along the narrow foothold of the

window-pane frames. Presently Cornelia got up from the low stool on

which she had been sitting, and, having slipped on the waist of her new

dress, invited Sophie's criticism with a courtesy.

"Dear me, Neelie!" exclaimed she, in gentle consternation, "are you

going to wear your corsage so low as that?"

"Yes, why not?" returned Cornelia, with a kind of defiance in her tone;

"it's the fashion, you know. Oh, I've seen them lower than that in New

York!"

"But there'll be nothing like it here, dear, I'm sure. Think how

frightened poor Bill Reynolds will be when he sees you."

Sophie looked up, expecting to see her sister smile; but she, having in

view the opinion of quite another person than Mr. Reynolds, remained

unusually grave.

"Don't mind me, dear," Sophie added, fearing she might have given

offense. "You know I'd rather see you look well than myself, especially

as I may not be here to see you another year."

She drew a long breath of happy regret, thinking of what was to follow

the next day but one after the ball.

Cornelia, looking into the fire, her pure, round chin resting on her

bent forefinger, started, as the same thought entered her mind. Was it

so near, though--that marriage? or would an eternity elapse ere Bressant

and Sophie called one another husband and wife?