irable. If I cannot
attain the one, I must make the best of the other."

Harriett Phillips listened to all this, and believed that matters were
much worse with Brandon than they really were. She had no fancy for a
twelve years' banishment from England, nor for a rough life in the
bush. Mr. Brandon had been represented to her as a thriving settler who
had made money. She saw the very comfortable style in which her brother
lived, and she had no objection to such an establishment for herself;
but she was not so particularly fond of Mr. Brandon as to accept for
his sake a life so very different and so very much inferior. She felt
that she had been deceived, and she did not like being deceived, or
mistaken, and she still less liked to make mistakes; and instead of
blaming herself, she was angry with everyone else--her brother, her
sister-in-law, Brandon himself--for leading her to believe that his
circumstances were so much better than they were. Of course, he would
ask her--he could not help doing so; but as to accepting him--that was
quite a different question.

She had put on her old bonnet with a grudge at Elsie; and when Mrs.
Phillips appeared in the drawing-room ready for the party to the
exhibition in all the splendour of her new one, which really looked
lovely, and she lovely in it, and Harriett caught the reflection of
both figures in the large mirror, she felt still more dissatisfied with
everybody than she had done before. The gentlemen were ready, and they
were just about to start, when a light quick step came to the door, and
a little tap was heard.

Harriett opened it, and was delighted to see Elsie holding in her hand
the second bonnet completed--equally beautiful, equally tasteful, and
apparently quite as expensive.

"Oh, Alice, how good of you! What a love of a bonnet! Come in and see
Mr. Hogarth. Look, Mrs. Phillips--look at Alice's clever handiwork."

And Alice was introduced a little unwillingly into the drawing room to
be complimented on her taste and her despatch, and to shake hands with
the two gentlemen. Miss Phillips was too much engrossed with her
bonnet, and with the improvement it would make in her appearance, to
observe the earnest, anxious looks of her two fancied admirers, as they
greeted her sister's lady'smaid; or that they looked with interest and
concern on her tired face, which, though now a little flushed with
excitement, bore to those who knew the circumstances traces of having
bee