“Mrs. Phillips of Wiriwilta?” said Mrs. Peck, eagerly.

“Yes, I fancy that is the name of the place; at least the children used to talk about it by that name.  Mr. Phillips is a sheep-farmer on the Victoria side,” said Mr. Dempster.

“And you say she is handsome?” said Mrs. Peck.

“Perfectly beautiful!—­but uneducated, and somewhat capricious.  I fancy her face must have captivated her husband, who is a very intelligent, agreeable man.”

“I suppose they are rich now?” said Mrs. Peck.

“Oh! very well to do, I fancy.  I visited them a good deal when I was in London.”

“How many children have they?” asked Mrs. Peck.  “I knew them long ago.”

“They lost one with scarlet fever before they sailed.  There were four on board ship; but there are five by this time, for Mrs. Phillips stayed in Melbourne for her confinement, and had a little boy within a week of landing.”

“Is her husband with her?” asked Mrs. Peck, eagerly.

“Oh, no!  I think Phillips went up to his stations; he had a number of things to see to.  What do you know about them?” asked Mr. Dempster, rather surprised at Mrs. Peck’s curiosity.

“I was once in their employment at Wiriwilta, and Mrs. Phillips was uncommonly good-looking then.  There was not so much style in those days as I suppose there is now.”

“Probably not; we have all had to work hard for what we have earned in these colonies and Phillips must have made his way like the rest of us.  They had a very pretty little establishment in London.”

“Kep’ their carriage, no doubt,” said Mrs. Peck, with a thinly-disguised sneer.

“No, they did not; but if it’s any satisfaction to you to know it, Mrs. Phillips has had a tour on the Continent, and has had a lady’s-maid.”

“A lady’s-maid,” said Mrs. Peck; “well! well! and the children, I suppose, are being educated up to the nines?”

“They took both the governess and the lady’s-maid with them to Melbourne,” said Mr. Dempster.  “They were sisters, and very superior young ladies.  In fact, to my taste, Mrs. Frankland, the lady’s-maid was more charming than the mistress; not so regularly handsome—­but very lovely—­while as to intelligence and refinement there was no comparison.  If she had been a dozen of years older I might have been a little presumptuous.”

“Was this Mrs. Phillips so very far behind as that her maid was so superior to her?” asked Mrs. Frankland.

“It happened that these sisters were the young ladies of whom, even in these distant parts, you may have heard something; who were brought up to inherit a large property in the south of Scotland, by a very eccentric uncle, who left everything he had to a son whom nobody had ever heard of before, and left the girls absolutely penniless.”

“Was not their name Melville?” asked Mrs. Peck, eagerly and fiercely.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Dempster, astonished to find his chatty communications to his old friend, Mrs. Frankland, taken up in this way by this unprepossessing-looking stranger.  “Yes, their name was Melville, and I never in my life met with more amiable, more intelligent, or better-principled girls.”