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Ballister’s return from France was heralded by the arrival of statuary and pictures, books, furniture, and numberless articles of tasteful and costly luxury. The reception of these by the family at home threw rather a new light on the probable changes in the long-absent brother, for, from the signal success of the business he had managed, they had very naturally supposed that it was the result only of unremitted and plodding care. Vague rumors of changes in his personal appearance had reached them, such as might be expected from conformity to foreign fashions, but those who had seen Philip Ballister in France, and called subsequently on the family in New York, were not people qualified to judge of the man, either from their own powers of observation or from any confidence he was likely to put forward while in their society. His letters had been delightful, but they were confined to third-person topics, descriptions of things likely to interest them, etc., and Fanny had few addressed personally to herself, having thought it worth while, for the experiment sake, or for some other reason, to see whether love would subsist without it usual pabulum of tender correspondence, and a veto on love-letters having served her for a parting injunction at Phil’s embarkation for Havre. However 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–by what had been taken away, not by what had been laid on. He was as natural as a bird, and as graceful and unembarrassed. He neither forced conversation, nor pressed the little attentions of the drawing-room, and his attitudes were full of repose; yet she was completely absorbed in what he said, and she had been impressed imperceptibly with his high-bred politeness, and the singular elegance of his person. Fanny felt there was a change in her relative position to her cousin. In what it consisted, or which had the advantage, she was perplexed to discover–but she bit her lips as she caught herself thinking that if she were not engaged to marry Philip Ballister, she should suspect that she had just fallen irrecoverably in love with him.