s well as yours? Oh, Francis! though I could
not have wished you to make the sacrifices you have made for my poor
sake, yet, now that it is done, it is not a half-heart I give you. I
will try to give you no cause to regret what I have cost you. Oh, how
glad I am to be able to tell you frankly how dear you are to me!"

Epilogue

It is Christmas-day, 186-. Jane Hogarth is busy making arrangements for
a quiet family dinner party, in her pretty house, not far from
Melbourne, a little annoyed because the season is so backward that no
fruit is to be had for love or money; but, on the whole, certain that
things will go off very well without it. Francis has succeeded very
well in Victoria. His talents and industry made him very valuable to
the mercantile house he went into. In the course of a few years he put
his capital into it, and got a partnership, which, now that the
principal was absent on a visit to England, was on equal terms. The
Brandons and Hogarths exchange Christmas visits with each other, and
this year it is Jane's turn to be the entertainer, and Elsie with her
husband and children have come down from the bush to have a little
gaiety in Melbourne.

This occasion was one to be especially remarked on, for there was a
bride to be honoured in the person of pretty Grace Forrester, whom Tom
Lowrie, now a rising engineer, had succeeded in winning as his wife.
All the Lowries had made good colonists; the eldest girl had married
respectably; the second assisted her aunt in the shop, which she had
recently enlarged and improved; but Tom's prospects were better than
those of any other of the family, and fully justified Jane's hopes and
expectations. There is no saying where he may stop in his colonial
career. Peggy, now called Miss Walker universally, except by one or two
old friends, was to accompany her nephew and his wife. Is it really
Peggy whom we see at Mrs. Hogarth's door with the dress of rich black
silk, destitute of crinoline, and the bonnet, in these days of tall
bonnets, flattened down in contempt of fashion, but still of excellent
materials?

She is a better-looking woman in her older days than when she was
younger. Brandon declares that in time she will turn out quite a
beauty, and takes more interest in the caps that his wife makes as a
regular thing for Peggy--four every year (nobody can make them to
please her as Mrs. Brandon can do)--than in any other of her attempts
at millinery.

Another