An Intermission

Within a week from the day of the engagement, a letter came from
Cornelia, speaking of her desire to be at home again, and further
intimating that she meant to return in a month at farthest. She did not
write with as much liveliness and light-heartedness as usual. Sophie
read the letter aloud to Bressant and her father as they sat in the
former's room on a cool August afternoon.

"How surprised she will be to hear what has been going on!" said Sophie,
looking for Bressant to sympathize with her smile. "I'll write to her
this evening and tell her all about it." She paused to imagine
Cornelia's delight, astonishment, and playful dismay on learning that
her younger sister, whom nobody ever suspected of such a thing, was
going to be married, and to "that deaf creature," too, whom they had
discussed so freely only two months or so before. "She must know before
anybody," said Sophie; and the professor, as he rubbed his spectacles,
grunted in approval.

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.