Miss Desmond rolled her black hair into a great smooth knot at the back of her head; and she put on a dress of that fugitive golden yellow, in which there is an artful intermingling of silvery sheen, and which milliners call maize--a bewilderingly beautiful colour when seen in conjunction with a handsome brunette. The loungers who dined at the Cedars that evening declared that Julia Desmond had never looked so splendid. Francis Tredethlyn sat by her at dinner, and was near her all the evening: and at night, when he found himself alone in the pretty chintz-curtain chamber that he had so often occupied of late, the young man seated himself by one of the windows, and, pushing open the sash, looked out at the quiet river rippling softly under the stars. “And she is to be my wife,” he thought; “she is very handsome, and I ought to be proud to think that she can care for such a fellow as I. And yet----” His head sank forward on his folded arms, and the image of a beautiful creature smiled before him in all the dazzling brightness of an opium-eater’s dream. Francis Tredethlyn gave one long regretful sigh as he raised his head, and looked moodily out at the distant woodland on the other side of the river. “What can it matter whom I marry?” he asked himself, bitterly; “would _she_ ever think of me, if I were to come to this house every day for ten years at a stretch? Why, her dogs are more to her and dearer to her twenty times than I am. And Julia Desmond loves me, and thinks me better than those fellows with the yellow whiskers, who are always talking of new books and new music. They please _her_; but Julia despises them. Am I such a wretch that I cannot be grateful for a sensible woman’s affection? I _am_ grateful to her. I am proud to think that she will be my wife. But I wish I was back in Van Diemen’s Land, blacking the captain’s boots, and smoking shag tobacco with Surly Bill the burglar.” After that dramatic little scene in the twilight study at the Cedars, everything went on velvet. Julia was triumphant; Maude was delighted and sympathetic. What could be more charming or more proper than that Julia should marry a man with thirty thousand a year for his fortune? The only hindrance to universal happiness in a very delightful world was the fact that so many people had to do _without_ thirty thousand a year, Miss Hillary thought, whenever she gave her mind to the study of political economy.