r varied by their different
fancies, the transformation looked for by the whole family was
substantially the same--the romantic artist sobered down to a
practical, plain man of business. And Fanny herself had an occasional
misgiving as to her relish for his counting-house virtues and manners;
though, on the detection of the feeling, she immediately closed her
eyes upon it, and drummed up her delinquent constancy for "parade and
inspection."

All bustles are very much alike (we use the word as defined in
Johnson), and the reader will appreciate our delicacy, besides, in not
intruding on the first reunion of relatives and lovers long separated.

The morning after Philip Ballister's arrival, the family sat long at
breakfast. The mother's gaze fastened untiringly on the features of her
son--still her boy--prying into them with a vain effort to reconcile
the face of the man with the cherished picture of the child with sunny
locks, and noting little else than the work of inward change upon the
countenance and expression. The brother, with the predominant feeling
of respect for the intelligence and industry of one who had made the
fortunes of the house, read only subdued sagacity in the perfect
simplicity of his whole exterior. And Fanny--Fanny was puzzled. The
_bourgeoisie_ and ledger-bred hardness of manner which she had looked
for were not there, nor any variety of the "foreign slip-slop" common
to travelled youth, nor any superciliousness, nor (faith!) any wear and
tear of youth and good looks--nothing that she expected--nothing! Not
even a French guard-chain!

What there _was_ in her cousin's manners and exterior, however, was
much more difficult to define by Miss Bellairs than what there _was
not_. She began the renewal of their intercourse with very high
spirits, herself--the simple nature and unpretendingness of his address
awakening only an unembarrassed pleasure at seeing him again--but she
soon began to suspect there was an exquisite refinement in this very
simplicity, and to wonder "at the trick of it;" and, after the first
day passed in his society, her heart beat when he spoke to her, as it
did not use to beat when she was sitting to him for her picture, and
listening to his passionate love-making. And, with all her faculties,
she studied him. What was the charm of his presence? He was himself,
and himself only. He seemed perfect, but he seemed to have arrived at
perfection like a statue, not like a picture--b