The professor
stood much at the window, and once or twice he imagined he caught a
glimpse, somewhere down the road, of a darkly-clad woman's figure; but
she never came nearer, and he decided it must be a hallucination of his
fading eyes.
Eleven o'clock struck from the little ormolu timepiece. A few moments
afterward Sophie stirred slightly as she lay, and the professor and
Cornelia listened breathlessly for what she would say.
She lifted her heavy lids, and turned her eyes, a little dimmer now than
heretofore, but steady and confident, first on her father, then on her
sister.
"Till noon--remember!" said she.
Nothing more was heard, after that, but the hasty ticking of the little
ormolu clock, as its hands traveled steadily around the circle.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE HOUR AND THE MAN.
Bressant jumped on to the platform of the newly-arrived train. The cars
were pretty full; but, coming at last to a vacant seat by the side of a
clean-shaven gentleman with a straight, hard mouth, and a glossy-brown
wig, curling smoothly inward all around the edge, he dropped into it
without ceremony.
The train left the depot and hurried away over the road which Bressant
had just traversed in the opposite direction. He sat with his arms
folded, appearing to take no notice of any thing, and his neighbor with
the wig read the latest edition of a New-York paper with stern
attention, occasionally altering the position of his stove-pipe hat on
his head.
Pages:
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411