When this engagement was entered into Jane accompanied Elsie to Mrs. Dunn’s, who readily took her into her work-room, and was very much pleased to hear that Miss Melville had got such a desirable situation.  The Rennies were also full of congratulations, and felt that their invitations and their getting the sisters an introduction to Mr. Brandon, had secured such a magnificent salary from another Australian millionaire.  Miss Rennie was particularly pleased that she had dwelt so much on the misfortunes and talents of the sisters.  The last evening Jane spent in Edinburgh was passed at the Rennies’; Mr. Brandon was asked to meet the girls he had been of such service to, and though Mr. Hogarth was rather dull, and Laura Wilson in a particularly unamiable mood, the liveliness of the Australian settler made it pass off very pleasantly.

Jane had not only Mr. Phillips, but Mr. Brandon also as travelling companion.  Australians in England have a great tendency to fraternise, even though they were not much acquainted in the colony, and when his old neighbour returned to London, Brandon thought he could not do better than go with him, and go back to the north when it was not quite so cold.  The gentlemen had a great deal to say to each other on matters both colonial and English.  In English politics they took quite as great an interest as if they had never been out of Britain, and in Continental politics they took a greater interest than is usual with English people.  Jane was occupied with her own thoughts.  The parting from Elsie had been a sad one, so had the good-bye to Francis, who had said so much about her writing if she was unhappy, or if she did not think she could keep her situation with a lady of such a peculiar temper as Mrs. Phillips, that she could not help fearing herself for the permanency of the situation.

Nothing that had fallen from Peggy, or from Mr. Brandon either, had prepared Jane for the exceeding beauty of Mrs. Phillips.  Jane never had seen a woman so strikingly handsome before.  When she spoke the charm was somewhat broken, for her ideas were not brilliant, and she expressed herself in indifferent English; but in repose she was like a queen of romance.  Tall and large, but exquisitely formed, with a soft creamy complexion, with a slight faint rose colour on the cheeks, and a more vivid red on the pouting lips, finely-shaped brown eyes, and a profusion of rippling dark brown hair, she certainly offered the fairest possible excuse for her husband’s marrying beneath his rank—­both social and intellectual.  Such beauty as Mrs. Phillips’s is a power, and Jane felt how difficult it would be to take high ground with so exquisite a creature.  As Mr. Brandon said, she was handsomer than ever; the girlish beauty of sixteen, which she possessed when she captivated Mr. Phillips, had matured into the perfect beauty of womanhood.  Though the mother of five children, she was not, and certainly did not look, twenty-seven.  Emily was not so regularly handsome as her mother, but had more animation and more play of feature.  Harriett would have been considered a pretty child in any other family, but she was quite a plain one in this.