It had seemed to her wrong that he should be sent away, and the assertion of Harry that he intended to stay and watch over her and her sisters seemed at once absurd and presumptuous; but she already felt that she had been wrong in that opinion.
The decision and coolness with which he had at once taken the command from the moment he met them in the gallery, and the quickness with which he had seized the only mode of escape, had surprised and dominated her.

Her own impulse, when on opening the door she heard the attack that was being made on the gate, was to draw back instantly and return to the side of her parents, and it was due to Harry only that she and her sisters had got safely away.
Hitherto, although after the incident of the mad dog she had exchanged her former attitude of absolute indifference to one of cordiality and friendliness, she had regarded him as a boy.

Indeed she had treated and considered him as being very much younger than Ernest, and in some respects she had been justified in doing so, for in his light-hearted fun, his love of active exercise, and his entire absence of any assumption of age, he was far more boyish than Ernest.

But although her thoughts were too busy now to permit her to analyse her feelings, she knew that she had been mistaken, and felt a strange confidence in this lad who had so promptly and coolly assumed the entire command of the party, and had piloted them with such steady nerve through the danger.
As for Jeanne, she felt no surprise and but little alarm.

Her confidence in her protector was unbounded.