The rude shakings given her by Sir Purcell, at a time when she needed all her power of dreaming, to support the horror of accumulated facts, was almost resented.  “He as much as says he doubts me, when this is what I endure!” she cried to herself, as Mrs. Chump ordered her champagne-glass to be filled, with “Now, Cornelia, my dear; if it’s bad luck we’re in for, there’s nothin’ cheats ut like champagne,” and she had to put the (to her) nauseous bubbles to her lips.  Sir Purcell had not been told of her tribulations, and he had not expressed any doubt of her truth; but sentimentalists can read one another with peculiar accuracy through their bewitching gauzes.  She read his unwritten doubt, and therefore expected her unwritten misery to be read.

So it is when you play at Life!  When you will not go straight, you get into this twisting maze.  Now he wrote coldly, and she had to repress a feeling of resentment at that also.  She ascribed the changes of his tone fundamentally to want of faith in her, and absolutely, during the struggle she underwent, she by this means somehow strengthened her idea of her own faithfulness.  She would have phrased her projected line of conduct thus:  “I owe every appearance of assent to my poor father’s scheme, that will spare his health.  I owe him everything, save the positive sacrifice of my hand.”  In fact, she meant to do her duty to her father up to the last moment, and then, on the extreme verge, to remember her duty to her lover.  But she could not write it down, and tell her lover as much.  She knew instinctively that, facing the eyes, it would not look well.  Perhaps, at another season, she would have acted and thought with less folly; but the dull pain of her great uncertainty, and the little stinging whips daily applied to her, exaggerated her tendency to self-deception.  “Who has ever had to bear so much?—­what slave?” she would exclaim, as a refuge from the edge of his veiled irony.  For a slave has, if not selection of what he will eat and drink, the option of rejecting what is distasteful.  Cornelia had not.  She had to act a part every day with Mrs. Chump, while all those she loved, and respected, and clung to, were in the same conspiracy.  The consolation of hating, or of despising, her tormentress was denied.  The thought that the poor helpless creature had been possibly ruined by them, chastened Cornelia’s reflections mightily, and taught her to walk very humbly through the duties of the day.  Her powers of endurance were stretched to their utmost.  A sublime affliction would, as she felt bitterly, have enlarged her soul.  This sordid misery narrowed it.  Why did not her lover, if his love was passionate, himself cut the knot claim her, and put her to a quick decision?  She conceived that were he to bring on a supreme crisis, her heart would declare itself.  But he appeared to be wanting in that form of courage.  Does it become a beggar to act such valiant parts? perhaps he was even then replying from his stuffy lodgings.