o calculating!"

"By the bumps over my eyebrows, I suppose. Why, my dear coz, we have
another state of existence to look forward to--old man-age and old
woman-age! What am I to do with five hundred dollars a year, when my
old frame wants gilding--(to use one of your own similes)--I sha'n't
always be pretty Fanny Bellairs!"

"But, good Heavens! we shall grow old together!" exclaimed the painter,
sitting down at her feet, "and what will you care for other admiration,
if your husband see you still beautiful, with the eyes of memory and
habit."

"Even if I were sure he would so look upon me," answered Miss Bellairs,
more seriously, "I cannot but dread an old age without great means of
embellishment. Old people, except in poetry and in very primitive
society, are dishonored by wants and cares. And, indeed, before we are
old--when neither young nor old--we want horses and ottomans, kalydor
and conservatories, books, pictures, and silk curtains--all quite out
of the range of your little allowance, don't you see!"

"You do not love me, Fanny!"

"I do--and will marry you, Philip--as I, long ago, with my whole heart,
promised. But I wish to be happy with you--as happy, quite as happy, as
is at all possible, with our best efforts, and coolest, discreetest
management. I laugh the matter over sometimes, but I may tell you,
since you are determined to be in earnest, that I have treated it, in
my solitary thought, as the one important event of my life--(so indeed
it is!)--and, as such, worthy of all forethought, patience, self-denial,
and calculation. To inevitable ills I can make up my mind like other
people. If your art were your only hope of subsistence--why--I don't
know--(should I look well as a page?)--I don't know that I couldn't run
your errands and grind your paints in hose and doublet. But there is
another door open for you--a counting-house door, to be sure--leading
to opulence and all the appliances of dignity and happiness, and
through this door, my dear Philip, the art you would live by comes to
pay tribute and beg for patronage. Now, out of your hundred and twenty
reasons, give me the two stoutest and best, why you should refuse your
brother's golden offer of partnership--my share, in your alternative of
poverty, left for the moment out of the question."

Rather overborne by the confident decision of his beautiful cousin, and
having probably made up his mind that he must ultimately yield to her,
Philip replied in