ck with the humble sweetness, which made
him think more highly of poor Frank than ever he had done before.
He had decided against himself, feeling how much his fall at the
race-ground had been the effect of the manner in which he had
allowed himself to be led during the previous season in London, and
owning how far his whole aim in life fell short of what it ought to
be, asking nothing for himself, not even hope nor patience, though
he could not refrain from expressing his own undying love, and his
one desire that if she had not attached herself to one more worthy,
he might in time be thought to have proved his repentance. 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. He did not actually fleece them
himself, he had too little worldly wisdom for that; but he was the
decoy of a coterie of Nyms, Pistols, and Bardolphs, who gathered up
the spoil of these and any unwary youth who came to Rockpier in the
wake of an invalid, or to 'see life' at a fashionable watering-
place. Miles thought the old man was probably reduced to a worse
style of company by the very fact of the religious atmosphere of the
place, where he himself found so little to do that he longed for the
opening of the Session; but he was strongly impressed with the
impracticability of a menage for Frank, with