"Any way, he looks as if he was a waif from the heroic age. But, my
dear, did not I hear him call you Lucy?"

"They generally do."

"I would not let them. Cling to your auntship; it explains your
being with them. A grand creature! I feel like the people who had
had a visit from the gods of old."

"And you understand how impossible it would be to run away," I said.

She smiled, but added, "Lucy, my dear, that looked very like a
wedding-ring!"

I could not think it possible. Why, he was scarcely five-and-twenty!
And yet the suggestion haunted me, whenever my eyes fell on his
countenance in repose, and noted the habitual sadness of expression
which certainly did not match with the fine open face that seemed
fitted to express the joy of strength. It came on me too when, at
the lodge, a child who had been left alone too long and had fallen
into an unmitigated agony of screaming, Harry had actually, instead
of fleeing from the sound, gone in, taken the screamer in his arms,
and so hushed and pacified it, that on the mother's return she found
it at perfect rest.

"One would think the gentleman was a father himself, ma'am," she had
said to me; and thereupon Harold had coloured, and turned hastily
aside, so that the woman fancied she had offended him and apologised,
so that he had been forced to look back again and say, "Never mind,"
and "No harm done," with a half laugh, which, as it now struck me,