But even here the girl's inner mind had begun to doubt and demur.

After all did she know much--or anything--of their real relation?
Certainly this afternoon he was a delightful companion.

That phrase which Vanbrugh Neal had applied to him in Lucy's hearing, which had seemed to her so absurd, began after all to fit.

He was _bon enfant_ both to Eleanor and to her on this golden afternoon.

He remembered Eleanor's love for broom and brought her bunches of it from the steep banks; he made affectionate mock of Neal's old-maidish ways; he threw himself with ejaculations, joyous, paradoxical, violent, on the unfolding beauty of the lake and the spring; and throughout he made them feel his presence as something warmly strong and human, for all his provoking defects, and that element of the uncommunicated and unexplained which was always to be felt in him.