"Of all that had been said or done this last half-year. There's nothing
you care for more than me, is there?" he demanded, concentrating the
greatest emphasis into the question.
"If you care for me--if I can be every thing to you"--Cornelia's voice
was broken and tossed upon the uncontrolled waves of fighting emotions,
and she could give little care to the form and manner of her speech.
"I love you--of course I love you!--what else is there for me to do? But
I've been all this time trying to find out what love was. I thought I
loved Sophie, you know."
Bressant's strange words and altered manner dismayed Cornelia. What was
the matter with him? She could not get it out of her head that some
awful event must have happened, but she knew not how to frame inquiries.
Bressant continued--a determined levity in his tone was yet occasionally
broken down by a stroke of feeling terribly real:
"I was a great fool--you should have told me; you knew more about it
than I did. It was my self-conceit--I thought nothing was too good for
me. When I saw you I thought you were the flower of the world, so I
wanted you. Well--you are--the flower of the world!"
"He does love me!" said Cornelia to herself, and she knew a momentary
pang of bliss which no consideration of honor or rectitude had power to
dull or diminish.
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