n up very late and very early over her work.

"I knew she could do it," Harriett whispered to Mr. Brandon, when Alice
left the room; "she is so excessively quick. I never would have said so
much about it yesterday, if I had not known she could easily do it; and
does not mine look as well as Mrs. Phillips's? I said it would." And so
she accepted Mr. Hogarth's arm, and went to see the pictures with a
better judge than Brandon, in all the triumph of her new bonnet--the
lightest, the most becoming she had ever had in her life: but her
influence with Walter Brandon was lost for ever. He wished he had had
Jane Melville, with her good common sense, or Elsie, with her sweet
voice and winning ways, hanging on his arm instead of Mrs. Phillips,
who was very uninteresting to him, though her great beauty and
excellent style of dress made her an object of interest to other
people, and who always enjoyed being well stared at in public places.
But Jane was engaged with her pupils at this time, and Elsie was always
kept very busy, so that neither of them could accompany the party, and
Francis Hogarth felt disappointed, for he had anticipated the society
of one or both of them.

How curiously the egotist, who fancies every one is engrossed with him
or with her, would be disappointed if he or she could see the real
thoughts of the people about them.. How Harriett Phillips would have
started if she could have read the hearts of Hogarth and Brandon, and
seen what a very infinitesimal share she had in either.

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 th