Francis was only impelled to pay attention to Miss Phillips by his natural sense of politeness, and by the wish to make the situation of his cousins in the family pleasant, as far as it lay in his power to do so; while Brandon, who had at last struck the key-note of Harriett’s character, was astonished to find new proofs of her selfishness and egotism peeping out in the most trifling circumstances.  He observed how different her manner was towards him, now that a man of property in the old country had appeared in the circle of her acquaintances, and he could not fail to see that an additional coldness had come over her when his circumstances were supposed to be less flourishing, and this made him rather disposed to make the most and the worst of his bad news.

In Derbyshire, where she had her own established place in the household, and where her father and her sister Georgiana gave way to her so much, she had appeared more amiable than she did now.  The armed neutrality which she maintained with her sister-in-law had amused Brandon at first, but now it appeared to him to be unladylike and ungraceful to accept of hospitality in her brother’s house without any gratitude or any forbearance.  He began to question the reality of her very great superiority over Mrs. Phillips; with all her advantages of education and society she ought to have shown more gentleness and affection both to her brother’s wife and his children.  He analysed, as he had never done before, her expressions, and weighed her opinions, and found they generally had more sound than sense; and her habitual assumption that she knew everything much better than other people, became tiresome when he did not believe in her superiority.

He began, too, to contrast the charm of a face, when the colour went and came with every emotion, with that of one so unimpressible as Harriett Phillips’s—­whose self-possession was nearly as different from that of Jane Melville as it was from the timidity and diffidence of Elsie.  Jane’s calmness was the result of a strong will mastering the strong emotions which she really felt, and not in the absence of any powerful feeling or emotion whatever.  Brandon had learned to like Jane better as he knew more of her, and rather enjoyed being preached to by one who could practise as well as preach.  He felt that if she was superior to him she did not look down on him; and she certainly had the power of making him speak well, and of bringing out the very large amount of real useful practical knowledge that he had acquired in his Australian life.  Her eagerness to hear everything about Australia and Australians certainly was in pleasing contrast to Miss Phillips’s distaste for all things and people colonial; but above all, Miss Phillips’s want of consideration for Alice Melville had weaned Mr. Brandon’s heart from her.  It was not merely unladylike; it was unwomanly.  He could not love a wife who had so little sympathy and so little generosity.