CHAPTER XIII.

Phil Compton went off next morning by an early train, having in the
meanwhile improved the impression of him left upon the family in
general, and specially upon Mrs. Dennistoun, to whom he had talked with
enthusiasm about Elinor, expressed indeed in terms unusual to her ears,
but perhaps only more piquant on that account, which greatly conciliated
the mother. "Don't you think," said the Honourable Phil, "because I
speak a little free and am not one for tall talk, that I don't know
what she is. I've got no poetry in me, but for the freest goer and the
highest spirit, without a bit of vice in her, there never was one like
Nell. The girls of my set, they're not worthy to tie her shoes--thing I
most regret is taking her among a lot that are not half good enough for
her. But you can't help your relations, can you? and you have to stick
to them for dozens of reasons. There's the Jew, when you know her she's
not such a bad sort--not generous, as you may see from what she's given
Nell, the old screw: but yet in her own way she stands by a fellow, and
we'll need it, not having just the Bank of England behind us. Her
husband, old Prestwich, isn't bad for a man that has made his own money,
and they've got a jolly house, always something going on."

"But I hope," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "that as soon as these autumn visits
are over you will have a house of your own."

"Oh, that!" said Compton, with a wave of his hand, which left it in some
doubt whether he was simply throwing off the suggestion, or treating it
as a foregone conclusion of which there could be no doubt. "Nell," he
went on, "gets on with the Jew like a house on fire--you see they don't
clash. Nell ain't one of the mannish sort, and she doesn't flirt--at
least not as far as I've seen----"

"I should hope not, indeed," said Mrs. Dennistoun.

"Oh, I'm not one of your curmudgeons. Where's the harm? But she don't,
and there's an end of it. She keeps herself to herself, and lets the Jew
go ahead, and think she's the attraction. And she'll please the old lord
down to the ground. For he's an old-fashioned old coon, and likes what
he calls _tenue_, don't you know: but the end is, there ain't one of
them that can hold a candle to Nell. And I should not wonder a bit if
she made a change in the lot of us. Conversion of a family by the
influence of a pious wife, don't you know. Sort of thing that they make
tracts out of. Capital thing, it would be," sai