"I tried to keep him," said Cleland, "but he insisted that it was really a matter of business. And, of course, I had nothing more to say."
"Did he have a good time here?" asked Stephanie in a guileless voice. But she looked sideways at him.
"I think so, Steve. He seemed carefree and vastly contented to rove over the place. I planned to go with him after trout, but he preferred to prowl about the lawn or smoke on the porch.... I am glad he came. I have learned to like him very much."
"You're a dear!" she murmured under her breath, her grey eyes fixed on him and full of a gay tenderness tinged with humour. "You always do the right thing, Jim; you are right, that's the reason. Do you wonder that I'm quite mad about you?—I, who am all wrong."
"Who says you are all wrong?" he demanded, starting toward her. But she deftly avoided him, putting the sun dial between them. And, leaning on it with both elbows, her face framed in her hands, she let her eyes look gay defiance into his.
"I'm all wrong," she said. "You don't know it, but I am."
"Do you want to be punished?"
She laughed tormentingly, feeling delightfully secure from his demonstrations there on the sunny lawn, with Helen wandering about inspecting the flowers in the garden, and the hired man unloading the luggage at the side-door.
"Come on, Helen!" she called gaily. "We can have a bath; there's plumbing in the house, you know. Where do you suppose that poor cat is hidden?"
Helen came from the garden with a blue pansy between her lips, which she presently drew through Cleland's lapel.