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.