Eleanor, like Patty, withstood the seductions of English life and miscellaneous English admirers, and lived to be Miss Yelverton in her turn, unappropriated and independent. And, like both her sisters, though more by accident than of deliberate intention, she remained true to her first love, and, after seeing the world and supping full of pleasure and luxury, returned to Melbourne and married Mr. Westmoreland. That is to say, Mr. Westmoreland followed her to England, and followed her all over Europe—dogging her from place to place with a steadfast persistence that certainly deserved reward—until the major and Mrs. Duff-Scott, returning home almost immediately after Patty's marriage and departure, brought their one ewe lamb, which the Yelvertons had not the conscience to immediately deprive them of, back to Australia with them; when her persevering suitor promptly took his passage in the same ship. All this time Mr. Westmoreland had been as much in love as his capacity for the tender passion—much larger than was generally supposed—permitted. Whether it was that she was the only woman who dared to bully him and trample on him, and thereby won his admiration and respect—or whether his passion required that the object of it should be difficult of attainment—or whether her grace and beauty were literally irresistible to him—or whether he was merely the sport of that unaccountable fate which seems to govern or misgovern these affairs, it is not necessary to conjecture. No one asks for reasons when a man or woman falls a victim to this sort of infatuation. Some said it was because she had become rich and grand, but that was not the case—except in so far as the change in her social circumstances had made her tyrannical and impudent, in which sense wealth and consequence had certainly enhanced her attractions in his eyes. Thirty thousand pounds, though a very respectable marriage portion in England, is not sufficient to make a fortune-hunter of an Australian suitor in his position; and let me do the Australian suitor of all ranks justice and here state that fortune hunting, through the medium of matrimony, is a weakness that his worst enemy cannot accuse him of—whatever his other faults may be. Mr. Westmoreland, being fond of money, as a constitutional and hereditary peculiarity—if you can call that a peculiarity—was tempted to marry it once, when that stout and swarthy person in the satin gown and diamonds exercised her fascinations on him at the club ball, and he could have married it at any time of his bachelor life, the above possessor of it being, like Barkis, "willin'", and even more than "willin'". Her fortune was such that Eleanor's thirty thousand was but a drop in the bucket compared with it, and yet even he did not value it in comparison with the favour of that capricious young lady. So he followed her about from day to day and from place to place, as if he had no other aim in life than to keep her within sight, making himself an insufferable nuisance to her friends very often, but apparently not offending her by his open and inveterate pursuit. She was not kind, but she was not cruel, and yet she was both in turn to a distracting degree. She made his life an ecstasy of miserable longing for her, keeping him by her side like a big dog on a chain, and feeding him with stones (in the prettiest manner) when he asked for bread. But she grew very partial to her big dog in the process of tormenting him and witnessing his touching patience under it. She was "used to him," she said; and when, from some untoward circumstance over which he had no control, he was for a little while absent from her, she felt the gap he left. She sensibly missed him. Moreover, though she trampled on him herself, it hurt her to see others do it; and when Mrs. Duff-Scott and Kingscote Yelverton respectively aired their opinions of his character and conduct, she instantly went over to his side, and protested in her heart, if not in words, against the injustice and opprobrium that he incurred for her sake. So, when Elizabeth became the much-occupied mother of a family, and when Patty was married and gone off into the world with her Paul, Eleanor, left alone in her independence, began to reckon up what it was worth. The spectacle of her sisters' wedded lives gave her pleasant notions of matrimony, and the state of single blessedness, as such, never had any particular charms for her. Was it worth while, she asked herself, to be cruel any more?—and might she not just as well have a house and home of her own as Elizabeth and Patty? Her lover was only a big dog upon a chain, but then why shouldn't he be? Husbands were not required to be all of the same pattern. She didn't want to be domineered over. And she didn't see anybody she liked better. She might go farther and fare worse. And—she was getting older every day.

Mrs. Duff-Scott broke in upon these meditations with the demand that she (Eleanor) should return with her to Melbourne, if only for a year or two, so that she should not be entirely bereft and desolate.

"I must start at once," said the energetic woman, suddenly seized with a paroxysm of home sickness and a sense of the necessity to be doing something now that at Yelverton there seemed nothing more to do, and in order to shake off the depressing effect of the first break in their little circle. "I have been away too long—it is time to be looking after my own business. Besides, I can't allow Patty to remain in that young man's lodgings—full of dusty papers and tobacco smoke, and where, I daresay, she hasn't so much as a peg to hang her dresses on. She must get a house at once, and I must be there to see about it, and to help her to choose the furniture. Elizabeth, my darling, you have your husband and child—I am leaving you happy and comfortable—and I will come and see you again in a year or two, or perhaps you and Kingscote will take a trip over yourselves and spend a winter with us. But I must go now. And do, do—oh, do let me keep Nelly for a little while longer! You know I will take care of her, and I couldn't bear the sight of my house with none of you in it!"

So she went, and of course she took Eleanor, who secretly longed for the land of sunshine after her full dose of "that horrid English climate," and who, with a sister at either end of the world, perhaps missed Patty, who had been her companion by night as well as by day, more than she would miss Elizabeth. The girl was very ready to go. She wept bitterly when the actual parting came, but she got over it in a way that gave great satisfaction to Mrs. Duff-Scott and the major, and relieved them of all fear that they had been selfish about bringing her away. They joined the mail steamer at Venice, and there found Mr. Westmoreland on board. He had been summoned by his agent at home he explained; one of his partners wanted to retire, and he had to be there to sign papers. And since it had so happened that he was obliged to go back by this particular boat, he hoped the ladies would make him useful, and let him look after their luggage and things. Eleanor was properly and conventionally astonished by the curious coincidence, but had known that it would happen just as well as he. The chaperon, for her part, was indignant and annoyed by it—for a little while; afterwards she, too, reflected that Eleanor had spent two unproductive years in England and was growing older every day. Also that she might certainly go farther and fare worse. So Mr. Westmoreland was accepted as a member of the travelling party. All the heavy duties of escort were relegated to him by the major, and Mrs. Duff-Scott sent him hither and thither in a way that he had never been accustomed to. But he was meek and biddable in these days, and did not mind what uses he put his noble self to for his lady's sake. And she was very gracious. The conditions of ship life, at once so favourable and so very unfavourable for the growth of tender relations, suited his requirements in every way. She could not snub him under the ever-watchful eyes of their fellow-passengers. She could not send him away from her. She was even a little tempted, by that ingrained vanity of the female heart, to make a display before the other and less favoured ladies of the subject-like homage which she, queen-like, received. Altogether, things went on in a very promising manner. So that when, no farther than the Red Sea—while life seemed, as it does in that charming locality, reduced to its simple elements, and the pleasure of having a man to fan her was a comparatively strong sensation—when at this propitious juncture, Mr. Westmoreland bewailed his hard fate for the thousandth time, and wondered whether he should ever have the good fortune to find a little favour in her sight, it seemed to her that this sort of thing had gone on long enough, and that she might as well pacify him and have done with it. So she said, looking at him languidly with her sentimental blue eyes—"Well, if you'll promise not to bother me any more, I'll think about it."

He promised faithfully not to bother her any more, and he did not. But he asked her presently, after fanning her in silence for some minutes, what colour she would like her carriage painted, and she answered promptly, "Dark green."

While they were yet upon the sea, a letter—three letters, in fact—were despatched to Yelverton, to ask the consent of the head of the family to the newly-formed engagement, and not long after the party arrived in Melbourne the desired permission was received, Mr. and Mrs. Yelverton having learned the futility of opposition in these matters, and having no serious objection to Nelly's choice. And then again Mrs. Duff-Scott plunged into the delight of preparation for trousseau and wedding festivities—quite willing that the "poor dear fellow," as she now called him (having taken him to her capacious heart), should receive the reward of his devotion without unnecessary delay. The house was already there, a spick and span family mansion in Toorak, built by Mr. Westmoreland's father, and inherited by himself ere the first gloss was off the furniture; there was nothing to do to that but to arrange the chairs and sofas, and scatter Eleanor's wedding presents over the tables. There was nothing more possible. It was "hopeless," Mrs. Duff-Scott said, surveying the bright and shining rooms through her double eye-glass. Unless it were entirely cleared out, and you started afresh from the beginning, she would defy you to make anything of it. So, as the bridegroom was particularly proud of his furniture, which was both new and costly, and would have scouted with indignation any suggestion of replacing it, Mrs. Duff-Scott abandoned Eleanor æsthetically to her fate. There was nothing to wait for, so the pair were made one with great pomp and ceremony not long after their return to Australia. Eleanor had the grandest wedding of them all, and really did wear "woven dew" on the occasion—with any quantity of lace about it of extravagant delicacy and preciousness. And now she has settled herself in her great, gay-coloured, handsome house, and is already a very fashionable and much-admired and much-sought-after lady—so overwhelmed with her social engagements and responsibilities sometimes that she says she doesn't know what she should do if she hadn't Patty's quiet little house to slip into now and then. But she enjoys it. And she enjoys leading her infatuated husband about with her, like a tame bear on a string, to show people how very, very infatuated he is. It is her idea of married happiness—at present.

[CHAPTER LII.]

CONCLUSION.

While Mrs. Westmoreland thus disports herself in the gay world, Mrs. Brion pursues her less brilliant career in much peace and quietness. When she and Paul came back to Australia, a bride and bridegroom, free to follow their own devices unhampered by any necessity to consider the feelings of relatives and friends, nothing would satisfy her but to go straight from the ship to Mrs. M'Intyre's, and there temporarily abide in those tobacco-perfumed rooms which had once been such forbidden ground to her. She scoffed at the Oriental; she turned up her nose at the Esplanade; she would not hear of any suites of apartments, no matter how superior they might be. Her idea of perfect luxury was to go and live as Paul had lived, to find out all the little details of his old solitary life which aforetime she had not dared to inquire into, to rummage boldly over his bookshelves and desk and cupboards, which once it would have been indelicate for her to so much as look at, to revel in the sense that it was improper no longer for her to make just as free as she liked with his defunct bachelorhood, the existing conditions of which had had so many terrors for her. When Paul represented that it was not a fit place for her to go into, she told him that there was no place in the world so fit, and begged so hard to be taken there, if only for a week or two, that he let her have her way. And a very happy time they spent at No. 7, notwithstanding many little inconveniences. And even the inconveniences had their charm. Then Mrs. Duff-Scott and Eleanor came out, when it was felt to be time to say good-bye to these humble circumstances—to leave the flowery carpet, now faded and threadbare, the dingy rep suite, and the smirking Cenci over the mantelpiece, for the delectation of lodgers to whom such things were appropriate; and to select a house and furnish it as befitted the occupation of Miss Yelverton that was and her (now) distinguished husband.