Nevertheless, time went on, and November had stalked shivering away before the frosty breath of December, and still Cornelia had accomplished nothing definite; nay, she scarcely felt sufficiently sure of her footing to attempt any thing.  And what was it that she was to attempt?  On looking this question in the face, at close quarters—­it wanted less than four weeks now of that wedding-day which Cornelia had promised herself should see no wedding!—­when she found herself pressed so peremptorily as this for an answer, it might be imagined that she turned pale at what was before her.  And, indeed, the prospect, viewed in its best light, was discouraging and desperate enough.  For at what price to herself must success be bought, and at what sacrifice be enjoyed?  She must either lose, or deserve to lose, all that a woman ought to hold most sacred and most dear—­home, the esteem and love of friends, the protection of truth, and, above all, and worst of all, her own self-respect.  All these in exchange for a baffled, angry, selfish man, at whose mercy she would be, with only one word to speak in self-defense and justification; and it was much to be feared that he would, considering the circumstances, reject and scoff at even that.  The one word was—­she loved him! and, if there be any redeeming virtue in it, let her, in Heaven’s name, have the benefit thereof.  She can rely on nothing else.

But Cornelia would not be disheartened.  If she saw the rocks ahead, against whose fatal shoulders she was being swept—­if she heard, dinning in her ears, the rush and roar of the headlong, irresistible rapids—­if her eyes could penetrate the void which opened darkly beyond—­she only nerved herself the more resolutely, her glance was all the firmer, her determination the more unfaltering.

The peril in which she stood but kindled in her heart a fiery depth of passion, such as overtopped and tamed the very terrors of her position.  Because she must lose the world to gain her end, that end was exalted, in her thought, above a hundred worlds.  The faculties of her soul, which, in her time of innocence and indifference, had been dormant—­half alive—­now sprang at once into an exalted, fierce vitality.  The hour of evil found Cornelia a creature of far higher powers and more vigorous development than she could ever, under any other conditions, have attained.  She showed most gloriously and greatly, when illuminated by that lurid light whose flame was fed by all that was most gentle, womanly, and sweet within her.  She looked nearest to a goddess, when she needed but one step to be transformed into a demon.