“Oh! it was none at all, and our families had been so long on friendly terms, that I thought it but right to say you would not throw yourself away.” “Allow me to ask why you speak in this manner,” said Miss Austin, now fully roused, and recovering her self-possession, “if I should marry Mr. Dunning, how could I be thought to throw myself away?” “What a question! Why the man has neither family nor fortune to boast of, while you have both.” “As far as money is concerned, I grant you I have the advantage; but as for family, few of us republicans can boast on that score. My grandmother, and yours too, Mrs. Tremaine, superintended their own dairies, made butter and cheese with their own hands, and sent them to market to be sold, nor did I ever hear that the good ladies were ashamed of their domestic employments. Your father and mine commenced life with naught save probity and perseverance; they were first clerks, then junior partners, and at last great capitalists, and we their children have thus been placed at the head of society.” “I know nothing at all of this nonsensical grandmother story about butter and cheese. I never heard of such a thing in our family.” “No, I suppose you did not. You have been taught to look on praiseworthy industry as derogatory to your ideas of gentility; but my father has always delighted in recurring to those days of boyhood, and he venerates the memory of his mother, whom he regarded while living as a pattern of domestic virtue.” “Oh, it is all nonsense talking in this way, Fanny. I wonder what Baron d’Haut-ton will say when he hears that the lady he wooed so unsuccessfully has been won by the heir of a man in the ‘sugar line?’” “Pardon me, Mrs. Tremaine, if I say you are forgetting yourself, or at least that you are presuming too far on your long acquaintance. My parents have no such ideas as yours, about fortune and family, and with their approval my heart is proud of its choice—proud, too, that it has been the chosen of the gifted, the noble-minded Dunning.” “Well, Fanny,” persisted Mrs. Tremaine, nothing abashed by the gentle rebuke which had been given—“well, Fanny, depend upon it you will place yourself in a false position. The friends who are now eager to court the society of Miss Austin, will stand aloof when invited to the house of Mrs. Dunning.” “Friends! did you ever know a true friend do aught that would depreciate the husband in the eyes of his wife, or lessen the wife in the esteem of her husband? For such of my so-called friends as would not honor the man I had chosen, when he was well worthy of their highest regard, I can but say the sooner we part company the better. It is not the long array of names upon my visiting list of which I am proud, but the worth of those who proffer me their friendship.”