CHAPTER III.
SOPHIE AND CORNELIA ENTER INTO A COVENANT.
When Cornelia left her father on the balcony, she danced up-stairs, and chasseed on tiptoe up to the door of Sophie's room.

There she stopped and knocked.
Somehow or other, nobody ever went into that room without knocking.

It never entered any one's head to burst in unannounced.

The door was an unimposing-looking piece of deal, grained by some village artist into the portraiture of an as yet undiscovered kind of wood, and considerably impaired in various ways by time.

It could not have been the door, therefore.