In many other ways also did Lucy feel herself baffled. Upon Robert Stead she had failed to make the slightest impression, either during the half-dozen calls he had made at the farm, or upon a ride she had taken in his company to his lodge on Windy Hill, when he had invited Mrs. Lawton and Brooke to see his garden and some prints of old masters that they had been discussing. The Cub being busy, Brooke had driven her mother in the buggy with old Billy, and Stead, who had ridden down with an extra saddle-horse in tow, had accompanied Lucy back. Not that he was discourteous; quite the contrary. He was the polished man of the world, always polite, with a pretty compliment, too well-rounded for spontaneity, upon his lips and plenty of intelligent conversation, as well as chink-filling small talk that prevented dangerous pauses, yet withal he was inscrutable. Hardly less so did Lucy find Brooke herself; perfectly free and frank in their daily intercourse, yet she neither offered nor asked special confidence. She brightened with all the charm of a born hostess when Stead came, and he gravitated toward her as naturally; yet when he left, even for six weeks’ stay, she exhibited no sign of loneliness and threw herself into her play, which she called the few hours she seized for painting, with fresh vigour, either working in the old carpenter’s shop, that by opening a trap door above had a fine north light, or going into the open fields to use Enoch Fenton’s colts, sheep, or oxen as studies. It was not strange, however, that Lucy could not fathom the mind of either maid or man, for did they really know themselves? Stead was experiencing the conscious coming of a second youth, even before he was more than in the full vigour of middle life. The period of torpor through which he had passed was much like the indifference and languid, brooding time of adolescence before the bite of motive and passion awakens body and brain and clears the vision; and it was Brooke who blamelessly had brought all this to pass, Brooke, with her heroism of womanhood that was none the less subtle and acute because of its elusiveness. Robert Stead loved her as a man loves but once, no matter how often he may marry, but this second passion was so different in its elements from the first that he did not recognize it as such, and consequently, unchecked, it doubled its hold, even while Lucy was unable to put two and two together, and piece a single palpable symptom.