"Not so, not so!" replied Lady Danvers, eagerly. "Let her he loves be nobly firm, and bold in affection. Let her do as your mother did; and, if there be competence, there will be happiness; but really, let us look about us. We are talking so eagerly," she said, while a warm blush fluttered over her cheek, "that people will say we are making love, and the duke will ask me about the gardens, and I shall be able to tell him nothing. Then will his grace have his good joke at poor me. However, Mr. Woodhall, whenever you like to see that picture, you can. It is at my seat in Somersetshire, and if I am absent when you pass that way, you have but to use my name, and the servants will show it to you. Bid them treat you hospitably, too, for their mistress's sake; now tell me, what is this we are coming to?"
"It is the fish-pond--illuminated, too, I see," replied Ralph; "let us go near the edge and look in. By day one can see down to the marble beneath. I know not whether this light is strong enough. Yes, it is; see how those gentlemen, in their gold and silver coats, swim quietly about, as if their watery world had no strife or contention in it. They always look to me like the prosperous and wealthy of this earth, who never seem to dream of all the strife, and care, and agony of body and of mind that is going on around them."
"Not so with all the prosperous!" replied the lady, in a tone almost reproachful; "those who are not quite so fortunate often do them an injustice. They can not see beneath the surface, or know not how often the heart, which has few or no sorrows of its own, bleeds for the sorrows of others. Yet so far you are right, I believe. Prosperity may have a tendency to harden the heart. Without feeling grief or care, imagination can not picture it distinctly, and we are in danger of forgetting, in our own tranquillity, the sorrows and the pangs which are not apparent to the eye."
They continued for a moment or two gazing into the clear water without noticing the groups that passed by. At length, however, a voice familiar to Ralph's ear said, loud enough for him to hear, "Yes, very lover-like, indeed! Do not disturb them."
He started; but the speaker was already going down one of the little alleys of the wilderness.