In the
meantime she would and could be only his beacon star.
Julius could not but take her home, and leave her with Frank, though
his mother was a little annoyed not to have first seen her; but when
Frank himself brought her to Mrs. Poynsett's arms, it turned out
that the two ladies were quite of one mind as to the inexpediency of
Sir Harry living with Frank. They said it very covertly, but each
understood the other, and Eleonora went home wonderfully happier,
and looking as if her fresh beauty would soon return.
There was quite enough to dazzle Miles, whose first opinion was that
they were hard on Sir Harry, and that two ladies and a clergyman
might be making a great deal too much of an old man's form of
loitering, especially in a female paradise of ritualism, as he was
pleased to call Rockpier, where all the male population seemed to be
invalids.
However, it was not long before he came round to their view. He
found that Sir Harry, in spite of his gentlemanly speech and
bearing, was a battered old roue, who was never happy but when
gambling, and whose air and title were baits to victims of a lower
class than himself; young clerks and medical students who were
flattered by his condescension.
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