"Don't you be too sure about that, honey.

You may have had enough to last you for ten years or so, but wait till you've turned forty, and if the hankerin' for love don't catch you at forty, you may begin to expect it somewhere around fifty.

Why, just look at that poor piano-playin' old maid in there.
Wouldn't you think she'd have done with it?
Well, she ain't--she ain't, and you ain't either, for that matter, I don't care how hard you argue!" "There are ten happy years ahead of me anyhow!" rejoined Gabriella, with a ringing laugh--the laugh, as Dr.French had once remarked, of a woman who is sound to the core.

She had triumphed over the past, and was not afraid, she told herself valiantly, of the future.
At the beginning of July the children went with Miss Polly to the country, and Gabriella, after seeing them off, turned back alone to begin a long summer of economy and drudgery.

In order to keep Fanny and Archibald out of town she was obliged to deny herself every unnecessary comfort--luxuries she had given up long ago--and to stay at Dinard's, in Madame's place, through the worst weeks of the year, when the showroom was deserted except for an occasional stray Southerner, and even the six arrogant young women were away on vacations.