s also a pleasant thing to one's friends and acquaintances.
Brandon had been disposed to take Harriett Phillips at her own
valuation, and to consider her very superior to himself in many things;
while she liked him, for his attentions gave her importance; and though
he wearied her sometimes, she could make up her mind to pass her life
with him without any feeling of its being a great sacrifice. But he
must stay in England; all his talk of returning to Victoria was only
talk; her influence would be quite sufficient to induce him to do that.
Though her heart was, in this lukewarm way, given to Mr. Brandon, she
had a great curiosity to see this Mr. Hogarth, whom Brandon had called,
in his rather vulgar colonial phraseology, "just her sort". She laid
herself out to please the new comer; and Brandon was disposed to take
offence--and did so. The events of the morning had made an impression
on him; but if she had possessed the tact which sympathy and
imagination alone can give, she might have appeased him, and brought
him back to his allegiance. She did not guess where the shoe pinched,
and she still further estranged the lover she had been secure of. She
was charmed at the idea of making him a little jealous; it was the
first opportunity she had ever had of flirting with another person in
his presence, and the flirtation was carried on in such a sensible way
that there was not a word said he had a right to be offended with. She
only talked of things about which Brandon knew very little, and Mr.
Hogarth a great deal, and she thought she was convincing both gentlemen
of her great conversational powers. It was really time Brandon should
be brought to the point, and this was the way to do it. While Brandon
felt the chains not of love, but of habit, dropping off him, and wished
that Elsie Melville was beside him, and not sitting between her cousin
and another Australian, who was talking to her vigorously on his
favourite subject of spirit-rapping and table-turning, and she was
listening so patiently, and making little smart speeches--he could tell
quite well by the expression of her eyes, though he could not hear the
low sweet voice distinctly enough to tell exactly what she said. He
recollected the party at Mrs. Rennie's, and how pleasant her voice was;
and felt Harriett Phillips's was not at all musical, at least, when she
was talking about the fine arts and tomorrow's exhibition to Mr.
Hogarth; while Francis wondered at any one p