With all Harriett Phillips’s success in society she had never had much admiration from the other sex.  This she did not attribute so much to anything as to her own superiority; it really wanted a great deal of courage for an average mortal to propose to her.  Her unconscious egotism had something rather grand in it; it was rarely obtrusive, but it was always there.  Her mind was naturally a vigorous one, but it had moved in a narrow channel, and whatever was out of her own groove, she ignored.  She appreciated whatever Jane Melville knew that she was herself acquainted with, but whatever she—­Harriett Phillips—­was ignorant of, must be valueless.  Now a comfortable opinion of oneself is not at all a disagreeable thing for the possessor, and kept within due bounds it is 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 presuming to have so much to say while his cousin Jane was in the room.