It seemed to Cornelia--for time enters involuntarily into our thoughts upon all subjects--that the present order of things must have existed for a far longer period than a single night. How could the events of a few hours wear such deep and uneffaceable channels in human lives? But our souls have a chronology of their own, compared with the vividness and instantaneous workings of which, our bodies bear but a dull and lagging part. Sorrow and joy, which act upon the soul immediately, must labor long ere they can write themselves legibly and permanently upon our faces. Cornelia fell to wondering, too--as most people under the pressure of grief are prone to do--whether there were any sympathy or any connection between the world and the human beings who live upon it. Her eyes wandered hither and thither about the room, and found it almost startling in its unaltered naturalness. There was the same view of trees, road, and field, out of the window; and the same snow which had fallen before the tragedy, lay there now. Even in Sophie's face there was no adequate transformation. Indeed, being somewhat reddened and swollen by the reaction from freezing, a stranger might have supposed that she was tolerably stout and glowing with vitality. And Cornelia looked at her own hands, as they lay in her lap: they were as round and shapely as ever; and there, upon the smooth back of one, below the forefinger, was a white scar, where she had cut herself when a little girl. Moreover--Cornelia started as her eyes rested upon it, and the blood rose painfully to her face--there was a dark, discolored bruise, encircling one wrist: Bressant's last gift--an ominous betrothal ring! Thus several hours passed away, until, at length, Cornelia raised her eyes suddenly, and encountered those of Sophie, fixed upon her. What a look was that! At all times there was more to be seen in Sophie's eyes than in most women's; but now they were fathomless, and yet never more clear and simple. Cornelia read in them all and more than legions of words could have told her. There were visible the complete grasp and appreciation of Cornelia's and Bressant's crime; the realization of her own position between them; pity and sympathy for the sinners, too, were there; and love, not sisterly, nor quite human, for Sophie had already begun to put on immortality--but such a love as an angel might have felt, knowing the temptation and the punishment. Before that look Cornelia felt her own bitterness and anguish fade away, as a candle is obliterated by the sun. She saw in Sophie so much higher a capacity for feeling, so much profounder and more sublime an emotion, that she was ashamed of her own beside it.