Miss Anne Cooper was a maiden lady of forty-two; a satellite who was well contented to revolve year after year round Madame Vincent, and reflect her golden rays. Madame Vincent had been a beauty in her day, and was still tenacious of her claims to that title. It was Miss Anne's constant study to foster this bump of self-conceit, and so cunningly did she play her part, so indignantly did she deny the advances of Old Time, that madame was flattered into the belief that he had really given her a quit claim.

Miss Anne's disinterested care of the silver, linen, and store-room was quite praiseworthy to those who did not know that she supplied a family of her relatives with all necessary articles from the Vincent resources. It was weary waiting for the expected codicil, and Miss Anne thought "a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush;" so if she occasionally abducted a pound or two of old Hyson or loaf-sugar, or a loaf of cake, or a pair of pies, she reasoned herself into the belief that they were, after all, only her lawful perquisites.

Yes, it was weary waiting for the codicil. Madame Vincent was an invalid, 'tis true; but so she had been these twenty years, having one of those india-rubber constitutions, which seem to set all medical precedents at defiance. She might last along for ten years to come—who knew?

Ten years! Miss Anne looked in the glass; the crow's-feet were planted round her own eyes, and it needed no microscope to see the silver threads in her once luxuriant black locks. Not that Miss Anne did not smile just as sweetly on her patroness as if she would not at any time have welcomed a call upon her from the undertaker. Miss Anne's voice, as she glided through the house with her bunch of keys, had that oily, hypocritical whine which is inseparable from your genuine toady, be it man or woman.

Miss Anne sat in the "blue chamber" of the Vincent mansion—a chamber that had once been occupied by young Master Vincent. Whether this gave it a charm in the lady's eyes or no, Miss Anne never had said. It was true that young Master Vincent, when he had nothing else to do, amused himself with irritating Miss Anne up to the snapping-point. They scarce met without a war of words, half jest, half earnest; but for all that, young Vincent's every wish was anticipated by Miss Anne. It was she who reinserted the enameled buttons in his vests, when they came from the laundress; it was she who righted his room, and kept all his little dandy apparatus (in the shape of perfumes, gold shirt-buttons, hair-oil, watch-guards, rings, etc.) in their appropriate places.

Your D'Orsay abroad, is generally a brute at home; selfish, sarcastic, ill-tempered, and exacting where he thinks it does not pay to be otherwise. All this Miss Anne turned aside with the skill and tact of a woman; occasionally quite quenching him with her witty replies, and forcing him to laugh even in his most diabolical moods. To be sure he would mutter some uncanonical words after it, and tell her to go to the torrid zone; and Miss Anne would smile as usual, drop a low courtesy, and glide from his presence; sometimes to go round making all sorts of housekeeping blunders; sometimes to sit down in her room, with her hands folded in her lap, and her great black eyes fixed immovably on the carpet, for all the world just as if Miss Anne were in love.

Old maids have their little thoughts; why not?

On the present occasion, as I have said, Miss Anne sat in "the blue chamber." She was paler than usual, and her Xantippe lips were closed more firmly together. The thread of her thoughts seemed no smoother than the thread between her fingers, beside breaking which she had broken six of Hemming's best drilled-eyed needles. At length, pushing the stool from beneath her feet, she threw down her work and strode impatiently up and down the apartment.

"To be balked after serving this Leah's apprenticeship, by a baby! and by that baby! I could love it for its likeness to him, did it not stand in my way. It was such doll faces as that baby's mother's which could fascinate Vincent, hey?—soulless, passionless little automatons. Ye gods! and how I have loved him, let these sunken eyes and mottled tresses bear witness," and Miss Anne looked at herself in the glass. "That is all past now; thank heaven, that secret dies with me. Who would ever suspect me of falling in love?" and Miss Anne laughed hysterically. "And now that hope died out, that baby is to come between me and my expected fortune!

"Simple Chloe! She little thought, when she repeated to me what she called 'her young mistress's crazy ravings,' that I could 'find a method in that madness.' Love is sharp-sighted; so is policy. That baby shall never come here. It should not, at any rate, for the mother's sake, pretty little fool!

"Madame will 'adopt' the baby, forsooth! She will fill the house with bibs and pinafores, and install me as head nurse, and to that child! All my fine castles to be knocked down by a baby's puny hand! We shall see.

"That old dotard, to adopt a baby at her time of life, when she ought to be thinking of her shroud."

"Ah, Anne, you there," said a voice at the door, "and busy as usual?"

"Yes, dear madame, work for you is only pastime."

"You were always a good creature, Anne," and madame tapped her affectionately on the shoulder.

"How very well you are looking to-day," said Anne. "Mourning is uncommonly becoming to you. Becky and I were saying this morning, as you passed through the hall, that no one would suppose you to be more than thirty."

"S-i-x-t-y, my dear, s-i-x-t-y," replied the old lady, cautiously closing the door; "but you should not flatter, Annie."

"It is not flattery to speak the truth," said Anne, with a mock-injured air.

"Well, well, don't take a joke so seriously, child; what everybody says must be true, I suppose," and madame looked complacently in the glass.

"Anne, do you know I can not think of any thing but that beautiful child? Don't you think his resemblance to our Vincent very remarkable?"

"Very, dear madame, I am not at all surprised at your fancying him. He is quite a charming little fellow."

"Isn't he, though?" exclaimed madame, with a pleased laugh; "do you know Anne I have about made up my mind to adopt him? I shall call him Vincent L'Estrange Vincent."

"How charming!" said Anne, "how interesting you will look; you will be taken for his mother."

"Very likely," said madame. "I recollect we were quite an object of attraction the day we rode out together; I think I am looking youthful Anne."

"No question of it, my dear madame—here—let me rearrange this bow in your cap; that's it; what execution you must have done in your day, madame."

"I had some lovers," replied the sexegenarian widow, with mock humility, as she twisted a gold circlet upon her finger.

"If report speaks true, their name was legion; I dare say there is some interesting story now, connected with that ring," suggested Anne.

"Poor Perry!" exclaimed madame—"I didn't treat him well; I wonder what ever came of him; how he used to sigh! What beautiful bouquets he brought me—how jealous he was of poor dear Vincent. I was a young, giddy thing then; and yet, I was good-hearted, Anne, for I remember how sorry I used to be that I couldn't marry all my lovers. I told Perry so, one day when he was on his knees to me, but he did not seem as much pleased as I expected. I don't think he always knew how to take a compliment.

"Poor Perry!

"I couldn't help liking him, he had such a dear pair of whiskers, quite À-la-corsair—but Vincent had the money, and I always needed such a quantity of dresses and things, Anne.

"Well—on my wedding-day, Perry walked by the house, looking handsomer than ever. I believe the creature did it on purpose to plague me. He had on white pants, and yellow Marseilles vest, salmon-colored neck-tie, and such a pretty dark-blue body-coat, with brass buttons; such a fit! I burst out a crying; I never saw any thing so heart-breaking as that coat; there was not a wrinkle in it from collar to tail. I don't think I should ever have got over it, Anne, had not my maid Victorine just then brought me in a set of bridal pearls from Vincent; they were really sumptuous.

"Poor dear Perry!

"Well—I was engaged to him just one night; and I think the moon was to blame for that, for as soon as the sun rose next morning, I knew it would not do. He was poor, and it was necessary I should have a fine establishment, you know. But poor Perry! I never shall forget that blue body-coat, never—it was such a fit!"

"The old fool!" exclaimed Anne, dismissing the bland smile from her face as the last fold of madame's dress fluttered through the door; "after all, she might do worse than to adopt this child. I could easier get rid of that baby than her second husband. I must rein up a little, with my flattery, or she may start off on that track.

"Poor Perry, indeed!" soliloquized Anne, "what geese men are! how many of them, I wonder, have had reason to thank their stars, that they did not get what their hearts were once set on. Well—any will-o'-the-wisp who trips it lightly, can lead any Solomon by the nose; it is a humiliating fact;" and Miss Anne took a look at herself in the glass; "sense is at a discount; well, it is the greatest compliment the present generation of men could have paid me, never to have made me an offer."