Few
people have the nerve to jump from a precipice, or stand in way of a
railway-engine, without first shutting their eyes, and perhaps their
ears also.
In Cornelia's mind there was no intention of ruining her sister's
happiness by interfering between her and Bressant; but then she did not
think it likely that to lose him would occasion Sophie any thing more
than a temporary and comparatively trifling degree of suffering. If she
could allow her love for him to depend upon the immaculateness of his
moral character, she did not love him as much as Cornelia, to whose
affection any considerations of that kind were immaterial. What, after
all, was Sophie's love but an idealization, which had, to be sure, taken
Bressant as its object, but which placed no vital dependence upon him?
But Cornelia's love was to her a matter of life and death: she was
quite convinced that to live without Bressant would be an impossibility.
The next question was, whether Bressant was really as good as Sophie
believed him to be. Cornelia did not think he was. Perhaps a secret
sense of his attitude toward her suggested her suspicions; perhaps they
were the result of her New-York experience, which had taught her just
enough about men to make her imagine there was more or less of dark and
indefinite villainy in the composition of all of them; perhaps it was
her wish that fathered her moral misgivings about him--for it must be
confessed that Cornelia was very far from shrinking at the idea of
seeing her suspicions verified.
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