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“With happiness in prospect, it would soon pass, my dear Philip!”

“But is there nothing wasted in this time? My life is yours–the gift of love. Are not these coming five years the very flower of it!–a mutual loss, too, for are they not, even more emphatically, the very flower of yours? Eighteen and twenty-five are ages at which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness–passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to beauty and sweetness–all I have that can be diminished or tarnished, or made dull by advancing age and contact with the world, is thrown away–for its spring and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for this? Will it–even if we are rich and blest with health, and as capable of an unblemished union as now? Think of this a moment, dear Fanny!”

“I do–it is full of force and meaning, and, could we marry now, with a tolerable prospect of competency, it would be irresistible. But poverty in wedlock, Philip–“

“What do you call poverty? If we can suffice for each other, and have the necessaries of life, we are not poor! My art will bring us consideration enough–which is the main end of wealth, after all–and, of society, speaking for myself only, I want nothing. Luxuries for yourself, Fanny–means for your dear comfort and pleasure–you should not want if the world held them, and surely the unbounded devotion of one man to the support of the one woman he loves, ought to suffice for the task! I am strong–I am capable of labor–I have limbs to toil, if my genius and my present means fail me, and, oh, Heaven! you could not want!”

“No, no, no! I thought not of want!” murmured Miss Bellairs, “I thought only–“

But she was not permitted to finish the sentence.

“Then my bright picture for the future may be realized!” exclaimed Philip, knitting his hands together in a transport of hope. “I may build up a reputation, with you for the constant partner of its triumphs and excitements! I may go through the world, and have some care in life besides subsistence, how I shall sleep, and eat, and accumulate gold; some companion, who, from the threshold of manhood, shared every thought–and knew every feeling–some pure and present angel who walked with me and purified my motives and ennobled my ambitions, and received from my lips and eyes, and from the beating of my heart against her own, all the love I had to give in a lifetime. Tell me, Fanny! tell me, my sweet cousin! is not this a picture of bliss, which, combined with success in my noble art, might make a Paradise on earth for you and me?”

The hand of Fanny Bellairs rested on the upturned forehead of her lover as he sat at her feet in the deepening twilight, and she answered him with such sweet words as are linked together by spells known only to woman–but his palette and pencils were, nevertheless, burned in solemn holocaust that very night, and the lady carried her point, as ladies must. And, to the importation of silks from Lyons, was devoted, thenceforth, the genius of a Raphael–perhaps! Who knows?

* * * * *

The reader will naturally have gathered from this dialogue that Miss Fanny Bellairs had black eyes, and was rather below the middle stature. She was a belle, and it is only belle-metal of this particular description which is not fusible by “burning words.” She had mind enough to appreciate fully the romance and enthusiasm of her cousin, Philip Ballister, and knew precisely the phenomena which a tall blonde (this complexion of woman being soluble in love and tears) would have exhibited under a similar experiment. While the fire of her love glowed, therefore, she opposed little resistance, and seemed softened and yielding, but her purpose remained unaltered, and she rang out “No!” the next morning, with a tone as little changed as a convent-bell from matins to vespers, though it has passed meantime through the furnace of an Italian noon.