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 figure, a sweet soprano voice; and she was run after at the Government House assemblies. She was hardly, however, one of the Melbourne beauties. Her hair was free from special merit; she had no complexion at all. Even her eyes were of a neutral tint, though as a rule they were subject to such clever control that the colour was of no consequence; the rule was broken when emotion softened them; then they required no management to render them quite bewitching. Genuine feeling was no stranger to Miss Jenny, but depth of feeling was. She was emotional. And greater even than her talent for singing was her natural turn for coquetry, which amounted to genius.

But when Miss Jenny came to stay in the back-blocks with her sister (whose invitations she had persistently refused for years) her little fling was over: she was engaged. It was a startling engagement. Her world could scarcely believe its ears when it was announced that the popular Genevieve—with her beauty, her money, her fairly smart tongue—had engaged herself to Clinton Browne, a country curate no better than a pauper. It seemed preposterous.