nt for
millinery, and I mean to try to cultivate it; for if we begin business
together in Melbourne, it may be very useful. Jane and I lay awake half
the night, talking over our plans, and I do not see why we should not
make our way in time."

"Then, you are going to forget the Muses altogether, and give your
whole soul to business?"

"Did you not do that every day, cousin Francis, when you were at the
Bank?" said Elsie.

"Perhaps you may write better poetry when you do not make it your day's
work. Do you not think she may, Francis?" said Jane.

"Very probably--very probably she may;" said Francis, thoughtfully, as
if he were weighing the advantages of literature being a staff, over
its being a crutch, but in reality he was not thinking of Elsie or her
verses, at all.

He had prepared himself to make a great sacrifice--to do something very
generous and Quixotic--not altogether uninfluenced by the wish for
personal happiness of the highest kind; but yet he believed that his
chief motives for taking the resolution were the forlorn and hopeless
situation of the two girls. Now they were no longer forlorn or
hopeless. If this situation for Jane was obtained, and Elsie persevered
in her determination to work hard at the perfecting of her taste for
making caps and bonnets, they had a definite plan of life, likely to be
as prosperous as that he could offer to them. And Jane would not accept
of him to-day, though she would probably have done so yesterday. His
plans, his ambitions, were too dear to her to be thrown away lightly,
and he could see nothing but sisterly affection in her eyes. If she
took the position she was entitled to at Mr. Phillips's, she was likely
to meet with some society there, and Mr. Brandon, or some other
Australian settler, not so shy of matrimony without a fortune on the
lady's part, as the middle-class Englishman of this century is, might
see some of the virtues and attractions which he had learned to
love--no one could see so many of them as himself--and might win the
best wife in the world, without being fully conscious of the blessing.
He knew the real strength of his love, when he tried to fancy Jane the
wife of any one else. He almost wished she might fail in her object,
and that Mr. Phillips would decide that she would not suit. He was
selfish enough to hope that she might not be happy there. They must
continue to correspond as frequently and as openly as hitherto. He
would watch for any tu