“My venerated mother belonged to an old school of housekeepers that are now obsolete, or fast passing away before the progress of civilization. Machinery does the work of laborers, and laborers have become intelligent directors of machinery. Nonsense! Even if this were not so, do you think I would let you spoil your exquisite beauty in the way you propose, Drusa? No, my darling, your beauty is too rare and rich to be put to any such uses. I think that even if I were a very poor man, I would rather labor day and night than you should soil your pretty hands,” he whispered, lifting one of the little members of which he spoke, and gazing on it with the eyes of a connoisseur and the smile of a lover.
“Oh, Alexander! dear Alexander!” said the little bride, earnestly, “please do not prize my looks so much. It frightens me when you do so.”
“But why?” smiled the bridegroom.
“Oh, because—one’s looks——”
“One’s beauty, you mean——”
“Oh, Alexander, it is such an accidental and perishable thing to be loved for. Illness or chance might destroy it in a day; and time will certainly impair it in the course of years. And whether I lose it sooner or later, what shall I do if I lose your love also?”
This was spoken so gravely and feelingly that the bridegroom burst into a laugh.
“Why you solemn little quiz! You remind me of a little prig of a Sunday school scholar that I used to see perched up in the corner of the housekeeper’s room in my mother’s house in Richmond. A little ‘rum un’ who used to sew quilt pieces and lecture lost sheep.”
“But oh, tell me one thing. Even if I should grow ugly, you would love me still, would you not, Alexander?”
“You grow ugly? impossible! Your beauty, if you take common care of it, will last you until you are sixty years old, and by that time, I, who am so much your senior, will be so blind with age, or love, or habit, that I shall not know whether you are a Venus or a Gorgon,” said Alexander, laughing, and rising from the table.