Bressant

While Aunt Margaret, sitting in her boudoir, thus took doubtful and

disconnected counsel with herself, Cornelia was left to manage her

little difficulties as best she might. Being tolerably quick in

observing, and putting things together, and unwilling to trust to

intuitive judgments of what was safe or unsafe in the moral atmosphere,

she set to work with all her wits, and not without some measure of

success, to fathom the secrets of the tantalizing freemasonry which

piqued her curiosity. By listening to all that was said, laughing when

others laughed, keeping silent when she was puzzled, comparing results

and drawing deductions, she presently began to understand a good deal

more than she had bargained for, was considerably shocked and disgusted,

and perhaps felt desirous to unlearn what she had learned.

But this was not so easy. Things she would willingly have forgotten

seemed, for that very reason, to stick in her memory--nay, in some moods

of mind, to appear less entirely objectionable than in others. She had

little opportunity for solitude--to bethink herself where she stood, and

how she came there. During the daytime, there were the young ladies,

here, there, and everywhere; there could be no seclusion. In the

afternoons and evenings some admiring, soft-voiced young gentleman was

always at her side, offering her his arm on the faintest pretext, or

attempting to put it round her waist on no pretext at all; who always

found it more convenient to murmur in her ear, than to speak out from a

reasonable distance; whose hands were always getting into proximity with

hers, and often attempting to clasp them; whose eyes were forever

expressing something earnest or arch, pleading or romantic--though

precisely what, his lingering utterance scarcely tried to define; who

never could "see the harm" of these and many other peculiarities of

behavior; and, indeed it was not very easy to argue about them, although

the young gentlemen never shrank from the dispute, and never failed to

have on hand an inexhaustible assortment of syllogisms to combat any

remonstrance that might be advanced withal; while at the worst they

could always be surprised and hurt if their conduct were called into

question. Well, they appeared to be refined and high-bred. Compare them

with Bill Reynolds! And the flattery of their attention, and the

preference they gave her over the other girls, were not entirely lost

upon Cornelia.

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!