Compared with her recent exhilaration, this was very extraordinary behavior.  She had rushed up-stairs intent upon pouring into Sophie’s ears the whole gorgeous tale of her hopes and anticipations for the coming summer.  Yet no sooner was she within the door than her excitement seemed to die out, and her enthusiasm ebb away.  Extraordinary as it appeared, it was by no means a rare occurrence.  Cornelia alone could have told how common; if, indeed, she ever reflected upon the matter.  She was very quick to feel a divergence of interests between her sister and herself, and always inferred that Sophie could not sympathize with any thing for which she had no personal taste.  In the present instance, it had all at once occurred to her that her sister would not be likely to care half so much about the gayeties of fashionable watering-places and city-life as she did, and might therefore treat with indifference what was to her an affair of the greatest moment; and a snub being one of those things which Cornelia found it most difficult, even in the mildest form, to endure, she had resolved, on the spur of the moment, to approach the topic of her proposed departure with the same coolness which she expected Sophie to manifest when she heard about it.

“Have you kept at that sewing ever since I went away?” asked she, idly examining the work which Sophie had laid down.

“I believe so,” replied Sophie, stroking her chin to a point between her forefinger and thumb.  “It’s so pleasant to be able to sew again at all that I should consider it no hardship to have to sew all day.”

Cornelia’s thoughts immediately reverted to the dresses which the next two weeks must see made.

“You wouldn’t be strong enough to do that, though, would you?  I mean to sew on dresses, and all that sort of thing?”

“Dresses?” said Sophie, looking up inquiringly into her sister’s face.  “Oh, you mean your dress for Abbie’s Fourth-of-July party?  I thought you were going to wear your—­”

“Oh, no, not that; I wasn’t thinking of that,” interrupted Miss Valeyon, with a gesture as if deprecating the idea of having ever entertained ideas so lowly.  “I shall hardly be in town on the Fourth,” she added, reflectively, as if calculating her engagements.

Sophie looked amazed, though it would have taken a keener observer than Cornelia was at the moment to detect the slight contraction of the under eyelids, and the barely perceptible droop of the corners of the mouth.  She saw that her sister had something of moment to tell her, and was, for some reason, coquettish about bringing it out.  Cornelia was often entertaining to Sophie when she least had intention of being so; but Sophie was far too tender of the young lady’s feelings knowingly to let her suspect it.

“Not be in town?” repeated she, demurely taking up her work; “why, where are you going, dear?”

“Oh!” said Cornelia, with one of those little half-yawns wherewith we cover our nervousness or suspense, “I didn’t tell you, did I?  Papa received a letter from a lady in New York, the one who wanted us to call her ‘Aunt Margaret’ when we were there ever so long ago—­the year after mamma died, you know—­asking me to come to her house there, and go round with her to Saratoga and all the fashionable watering-places.  The invitation was for about the first of July, so—­”