Ellen met Sir Isaac—in the days before he was Sir Isaac—at the house of a school friend with whom she was staying at Hythe, and afterwards her mother and sister came down and joined her for a fortnight at a Folkstone boarding house. Mr. Harman had caught a chill while inspecting his North Wales branches and had come down with his mother to recuperate. He and his mother occupied a suite of rooms in the most imposing hotel upon the Leas. Ellen’s friend’s people were partners in a big flour firm and had a pleasant new æsthetic white and green house of rough-cast and slates in the pretty country beyond the Hythe golf links, and Ellen’s friend’s father was deeply anxious to develop amiable arrangements with Mr. Harman. There was much tennis, much croquet, much cycling to the Hythe sea-wall and bathing from little tents and sitting about in the sunshine, and Mr. Harman had his first automobile with him—they were still something of a novelty in those days—and was urgent to take picnic parties to large lonely places on the downs. There were only two young men in that circle, one was engaged to Ellen’s friend’s sister, and the other was bound to a young woman remote in Italy; neither was strikingly attractive and both regarded Harman with that awe tempered by undignified furtive derision which wealth and business capacity so often inspire in the young male. At first he was quiet and simply looked at her, as it seemed any one might look, then she perceived he looked at her intently and continuously, and was persistently close to her and seemed always to be trying to do things to please her and attract her attention. And then from the general behaviour of the women about her, her mother and Mrs. Harman and her friend’s mother and her friend’s sister, rather than from any one specific thing they said, it grew upon her consciousness that this important and fabulously wealthy person, who was also it seemed to her so modest and quiet and touchingly benevolent, was in love with her. “Your daughter,” said Mrs. Harman repeatedly to Mrs. Sawbridge, “is charming, perfectly charming.” “She’s _such_ a child,” said Mrs. Sawbridge repeatedly in reply. And she told Ellen’s friend’s mother apropos of Ellen’s friend’s engagement that she wanted all her daughters to marry for love, she didn’t care what the man had so long as they loved each other, and meanwhile she took the utmost care that Isaac had undisputed access to the girl, was watchfully ready to fend off anyone else, made her take everything he offered and praised him quietly and steadily to her. She pointed out how modest and unassuming he was, in spite of the fact that he was “controlling an immense business” and in his own particular trade “a perfect Napoleon.” “For all one sees to the contrary he might be just a private gentleman. And he feeds thousands and thousands of people....”