Strong forces had been laboring within her during the last few
months. Love, disappointment, a passionate nature, a sense of wrong--not
least, her New-York experience--had developed, warped, and transformed
her. Bressant's homage had been the first, of any value to her, which
she had ever received. It had come unasked and unexpected, and had been
all the more attractive, because there was something not quite regular
about it. Being lost, she had felt a fierce necessity for repossessing
it, under whatever form, under whatever name. To-day, it was but the
turn of the conversation that had suggested the expedient of calling
herself his sister.
The very beauty and purity of the fraternal relation cloaks the
miserable rottenness of the imitation. So innocent does it seem, it
might almost deceive the parties to the deception themselves. "I may
love him, for I'm his sister!" said Cornelia; but could she in reality
have become his sister, she would, beyond all else, have shrunk from it.
"Nothing I do is in itself an impropriety," she could say: but her
secret sense and motive were enough to make the most innocent act
criminal. She closed her ears to the inner voice, and her eyes, looking
at her conduct only through the crimson glass of her desire, pronounced
it good.
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