To this Frank replied with rather a fiery look, “Mind, I will not have her persuaded or worked on.  It must be all her own doing.  Yes,” answering a look of his brother, “I see what you are about.  You want to tell her it is a superstition about her vow and not using me fairly.  So it may be in some points of view; but the fact remains.  She thought she might trust to my good sense and principle, and it proved that she was wrong.  After that it is not right to force myself on her.  I don’t dare to do it, Julius.  I have not been shut up with myself all these weeks for nothing.  I know now how unworthy I ever was to think of her as mine.  If I can ever prove my repentance she might in time forgive me; but for her to be driven to take me out of either supposed justice or mercy, I will not stand!  A wretched deaf being like me!  It is not fitting, and I will not have it done!”

Julius wrote—­“She is suffering greatly.  She nearly fainted at church, and I had to take her out.”

Frank’s face worked, and he put his hand over it as he said, “You are all torturing her; I shall write a letter and settle it myself.”

Frank did write the letter that very night, and when Julius next saw Eleonora her eyes were swollen with weeping, and she said—­

“Take me to him!  I must comfort him!”

“You have heard from him?”

“Yes.  Such a beautiful letter.  But he must not think it that.”

She did show the letter, reserved though she was.  She was right about it; Julius was struck 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.