“Even this country boor, with a great fortune of his own, must pay his meed of homage to the millionaire’s daughter,” thought Julia. “Is there some magical power in the possession of money which imparts a kind of fascination to the possessor?” Colonel Desmond’s daughter had felt some of the keenest stings of poverty, and it may be that she had grown to entertain an exaggerated estimation of that golden dross which is so paltry a thing when considered in a philosophical spirit. She looked at the young man sitting by her side; and as she looked, a mystic golden halo seemed to arise about him and surround him, until he appeared almost like an old picture of a saint, painted upon a shadowless background of gold. Thirty thousand a year! and he was young, handsome, manly, good-tempered-looking, or even something more than this; for there was a dash of nobility in his simple bearing which scarcely seemed to belong to the runaway son of a small farmer. The good old blood of the Tredethlyns, once squires and landowners of some degree, was not dishonoured by the young man who had blacked Harcourt Lowther’s boots in Van Diemen’s Land. He was not a gentleman after the manner of the nineteenth century; he seemed rather like a stalwart soldier of the past, simple and daring, frank and generous. Julia, contemplating him always enframed in the golden halo, saw that, with the advantage of a clever woman’s training, he might be made a very presentable creature; in spite of that private-soldier story, which, after all, was spiced with a certain flavour of romance. “People would say I married him for his money,” thought Miss Desmond; “but then they would say that if I married a provincial banker with fifteen hundred a year. Thirty thousand! thirty thousand a year!--and he is not a man who would act meanly in the matter of a settlement--and he could buy the Irish estate for a mere song--and he might call himself Tredethlyn Desmond.” Maude Hillary’s companion and friend had employed herself for a very long time in the consideration of one grand subject--her own destiny. For a long time she had estimated every creature who came in her way by one unvarying gauge. Had he, or had he not, any bearing on that supreme question? If the answer were in the negative, Miss Desmond wasted no further thought upon the useless creature. But if she saw in the shadowy distance some possible combination of circumstances in which the individual might become a thread, however slightly interwoven, in the fabric of her destiny, Julia expended her brightest smiles and sweetest words for his gratification.