ich were growing upon
himself. Nobody could understand better than Nell's good mother how
necessary it was that he should neglect no means of securing their
position, and he had found that often he would have to leave his darling
by herself: but this magnificent, this magnanimous offer on her part
would make everything right. Need he say how gratefully he accepted it?
Nell and he being on the spot would immediately begin looking out for
the house, and when they had a list of three or four to look at he hoped
she would come up to their rooms and select what she liked best. This
response took away Mrs. Dennistoun's breath, for, to tell the truth, she
had her own notions as to the house she wanted and as to the time to be
spent in town, and would certainly have preferred to manage everything
herself. But in this she had to yield, with thankfulness that in the
main point she was to have her way.

Did she have her way? It is very much to be doubted whether in such a
situation of affairs it would have been possible. The house that was
decided upon was not one which she would have chosen for herself,
neither would she have taken it from Easter to July. She had meant a
less expensive place and a shorter season; but after all, what did that
matter for once if it pleased Elinor? The worst of it was that she could
not at all satisfy herself that it pleased Elinor. It pleased Philip,
there was no doubt, but then it had not been intended except in a very
secondary way to please him. And when the racket of the season began
Mrs. Dennistoun had a good deal to bear. Philip, though he was supposed
to be a man of business and employed in the city, got up about noon,
which was dreadful to all her orderly country habits; the whole afternoon
through there was a perpetual tumult of visitors, who, when by chance
she encountered them in the hall or on the stairs, looked at her
superciliously as if she were the landlady. The man who opened the door,
and brushed Philip Compton's clothes, and was in his service, looked
superciliously at her too, and declined to have anything to say to "the
visitors for down-stairs." A noise of laughter and loud talk was
(distinctly) in her ears from noon till late at night. When Philip came
home, always much later than his wife, he was in the habit of bringing
men with him, whose voices rang through the house after everybody was
in bed. To be sure, there were compensations. She had Elinor often for
an hour or two