“Yes, that is true,” said Sophie, half reluctantly.  “Well?”

Bressant lay silent, with a peering, concentrated look in his eyes, his brows slightly contracted.  He must have had an intuitive foreboding that this matter of the two sisters would cause some difficulty, but he could hardly as yet have had a distinct understanding of what jealousy meant.

Howbeit, the lovers grew every day more intimate.  In the earlier days of her intercourse with him Sophie had felt an involuntary shrinking from she knew not what, but this had been entirely overcome, partly by habit, partly from an unconscious resolve on her part not to yield to it.  The quick, intelligent sympathy of her nature discerned and interpreted the germs of new ideas and impulses which were struggling into life in Bressant’s mind; she translated to him his better part, and warmed it with a flood of celestial sunshine.

But the sun which makes flowers bloom brings forth weeds as well, and it would not be strange if this awakening of Bressant’s dormant faculties should have also brought some evil to the surface which else might never have seen the light.

In the course of another week or so the invalid had so far improved as to be able to leave his room, and make short excursions about the house, and on to the balcony.  The feverish and morbid symptoms faded away, and the indulgence of a Titanic appetite began to bring back the broad, firm muscles to arms, legs, and body.  He felt the returning exhilaration of boundless vitality and restless vigor which had distinguished him before his accident.

The summer was now something overworn; the sultry dregs of August were ever and anon stirred by the cool finger of September.  The leaves, losing the green strength of their blood, changed color and fluttered, wavering earthward from the boughs whereon they had spent so many sociable months.  The surrounding hills seen from the parsonage-balcony took on subtle changes of tint; the patches of pine and evergreen showed out more and more distinctly; the over-ripe grass in the valley lay in lines of fragrant haycocks.

Every day, in the garden, a greater number of red and yellow leaves drifted about the paths, or scattered themselves over the flower-beds, or floated on the surface of the fountain-basin.  Little brown birds hopped backward and forward among the twigs, with quick, jerking tails and sideway, speculative heads; or upon the ground, pecking at it here and there with their little bills, as if under the impression that it was summer’s grave, and they might chance to dig her up again.  But once in a while they got discouraged, and took a sudden, rustling flight to the roof-tree of the barn, seemingly half inclined to continue on indefinitely southward.  Then, a reluctance to leave the old place coming over them, they would dip back again on their elastic little wings, to hop and peck anew.

Bressant and Sophie were sitting one afternoon—­it was in the first days of September, and within less than a week of the time when they might begin to expect Cornelia—­upon the little rustic bench beside the fountain.  Their conversation had filtered softly into silence, and only the flop-flop of the weak-backed little spout continued to prattle to the stillness.