The days that followed were full of this big person. Lucy found his company so pleasant that she lingered, to her own great consternation, talking to him, till Lady Randolph returned; no, not talking very much to him, but yet telling him various things about herself, which she was greatly surprised to recollect afterward, and hearing him talk, which he did with a frankness and freedom equally unusual to her. When she heard Lady Randolph’s brougham draw up at the door, Lucy fairly jumped from her chair in alarm and wonder. What would Lady Randolph say? would she be angry? A sentiment of honor alone kept her from running away; and her look of innocent panic greatly amused Sir Tom. “Are you afraid?” he said, with that great but harmonious laugh which softly shook the house. “Is she so hard upon you? Never mind, she is fond of me, though you would not think it, and there will be a general amnesty to-night.” “Oh, I am not afraid,” Lucy said, with a smile. But she said to herself, what will Lady Randolph think? the dedication first, and now to sit up and chatter to a gentleman! But Lady Randolph’s voice had never been so soft, nor her countenance so genial. She was so glad to see “Tom” that she saw everything in the most favorable light. At least this was the interpretation Lucy put upon her cloudless graciousness. “Don’t hurry away,” she said, “or Tom will think you are glad to escape now your post of entertainer is over;” and she kissed Lucy with a warm, natural tenderness which went to the girl’s heart. She went upstairs, indeed, altogether in a state of unusual and pleasant commotion. She had never met anybody in her life like Sir Tom. He told her of a hundred places he had been at, of his long journeys, and acquaintance with all sorts of things and people; bringing in the wide atmosphere of a big world into the four walls, which was all the sphere Lucy knew. How pleasant it was! It had stirred her altogether, with curiosity and interest, and amusement and admiration, yet with the amiable derision of a tidy, orderly girl for the man’s faculty of disarranging everything, which made the balance a little more even. He had seen every kind of wonder, but he could not sit down in a chair without ruffling up all its cover, and hooking on its ornaments to his buttons. This made her laugh, and disposed her to take care of Sir Tom, and pilot him to safe chairs, on which there were no antimacassars. She had felt perfectly at her ease with him, almost more than with Mr. Rushton, for instance, whom she had known at home; and the little agitation of his arrival, and the novelty of him generally, drove all her other ideas out of Lucy’s head. After she had gone to bed even, she could not but smile in the darkness to hear his big step coming upstairs, and his cheerful good-night to his aunt, which sounded up and down the narrow London staircase, so that everybody in the house shared it. “Good-night, Sir Tom,” Lucy said within herself and laughed.