Through the spacious lengths of a suite of richly-furnished rooms, a woman was wandering, with that air of nervous restlessness which betokens a mind ill at ease. The light, stealing in soft tints through the curtains, fell upon many pictures and objects of taste and art, and all that lavish richness of plenishing to which wealthy Gothamites are prone--but upon nothing so beautiful as the mistress of them all, who now moved from place to place, lifting a costly toy here, pausing before a picture there, but really interested in neither. "Virginia!" Her cousin Philip had come in through the library so silently that she was unaware of his presence until he spoke, although it was waiting for him which had made her so uneasy. "Well, Philip?" She had started when he spoke her name, but recovered her haughty self-possession immediately. "Sit down, please, on this sofa. I can not talk to you when you are standing. You look too cold and too imperious. I have come to-day for your answer, Virginia." They sat upon the sofa together, he turning so as to read her face, which was bent down as she played with the diamond ring upon her finger. She looked cool and quiet enough to dampen the ardor of her lover; but he was so absorbed in his own feelings that he could not and would not understand it. "Speak, Virginia! I can not bear this suspense." Still she hesitated; she _liked_ him too well to take any pleasure in giving him pain, frivolous coquette though she was. "I have questioned my heart closely, Philip, as you bade me," she began after a few moments, "and I have satisfied myself that I can never be happy as the wife of a poor man." "Then you do not love me! Love does not put itself in the scales and demand to be balanced with gold." "But gold is very necessary to its welfare and long life. No, Philip, I do not know that I love you--perhaps I do not--since I am not willing to make this sacrifice. I certainly think better of you than of any other living man, except my father; I would rather marry you than any other man, if you had the wealth necessary to support me in the station for which only I am fitted. A young man, with nothing to rely upon but the profession of the law, in a great city like this, must expect to wait some time before he can pour many honors and much wealth into the lap of the woman he loves." "You are sarcastic, Virginia!" "No, only practical. My father is not so rich as in days gone by. His fortune has dwindled until it is barely sufficient to keep up the house in the old style. If I would still preserve the family pride, still rule queen of the circle I have brought around me, I must marry rich." "And for this you can resign a love like mine."