not strange to see how little real hold the
objects of the natural world amid which we live
can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to
Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in
joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties
of the inanimate world, which modern
poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is
not, even in the best of us, one of the original
instincts of our nature. As children, we none
of us possess it. No uninstructed man or
woman possesses it. Those whose lives are most
exclusively passed amid the ever-changing
wonders of sea and land, are also those who are
most universally insensible to every aspect of
Nature not directly associated with the human
interest of their calling. Our capacity of
appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on, is,
in truth, one of the civilised accomplishments
which we all learn, as an Art; and, more, that
very capacity is rarely practised by any of us
except when our minds are most indolent and
most unoccupied. How much share have the
attractions of Nature ever had in the pleasurable
or painful interests and emotions of ourselves
or our friends? What space do they ever occupy
in the thousand little narratives of personal
experience which pass every day by word of mouth
from one of us to the other? All that our
minds can compass, all that our hearts can
learn, can be accomplished with equal certainty,
equal profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves,
in the poorest as in the richest prospect that
the face of the earth can show. There is surely
a reason for this want of inborn sympathy
between the creature and the creation around it,
a reason which may perhaps be found in the
widely diifering destinies of man and his earthly
sphere. The grandest mountain prospect that
the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation.
The smallest human interest that the
pure heart can feel, is appointed to immortality.

We had been out nearly three hours, when
the carriage again passed through the gates of
Limmeridge House.

On our way back, I had let the ladies settle
for themselves the first point of view which they
were to sketch, under my instructions, on the
afternoon of the next day. When they withdrew
to dress for dinner, and when I was alone
again in my little sitting-room, my spirits seemed
to leave me on a sudden. I felt ill at ease and
dissatisfied with myself, I hardly knew why.
Perhaps I was now conscious, for the first time,
of having enjoyed our drive too much in the
character of a guest, and too little in the
character of a drawing-master. Perhaps that
strange sense of something wanting, either in
Miss Fairlie or in myself, which had perplexed
me when I was first introduced to her, haunted
me still. Anyhow, it was a relief to my spirits
when the dinner-hour called me out of my
solitude, and took me back to the society of the
ladies of the house.

I was struck, on entering the drawing-room,
by the curious contrast, rather in material than
in colour, of the dresses which they now wore.
While Mrs. Vesey and Miss Halcombe were
richly clad (each in the manner most becoming
to her age), the first in silver-grey, and the
second in that delicate primrose-yellow colour,
which matches so well with a dark complexion
and black hair, Miss Fairlie was unpretendingly
and almost poorly dressed in plain white muslin.
It was spotlessly pure; it was beautifully put
on; but still it was the sort of dress which the
wife or daughter of a poor man might have
worn; and it made the heiress of Limmeridge
House, so far as externals went, look less
affluent in circumstances than her own
governess. At a later period, when I learnt to
know more of Miss Fairlie's character, I
discovered that this curious contrast, on the wrong
side, was due to her natural delicacy of feeling
and natural intensity of aversion to the slightest
personal display of her own wealth. Neither
Mrs. Vesey nor Miss Halcombe could ever
induce her to let the advantage in dress desert
the two ladies who were poor, to lean to the
side of the one lady who was rich.

When dinner was over, we returned together
to the drawing-room. Although Mr. Fairlie
(emulating the magnificent condescension of the
monarch who had picked up Titian's brush for
him) had instructed his butler to consult my
wishes in relation to the wine that I might prefer
after dinner, I was resolute enough to resist the
temptation of sitting in solitary grandeur among
bottles of my own choosing, and sensible enough
to ask the ladies' permission to leave the table
with them habitually, on the civilised foreign
plan, during the period of my residence at
Limmeridge House.

The drawing-room, to which we had now
withdrawn for the rest of the evening, was on
the ground-floor, and was of the same shape and
size as the breakfast-room. Large glass doors
at the lower end opened on to a terrace,
beautifully ornamented along its whole length with
a profusion of flowers. The soft, hazy twilight
was just shading leaf and blossom alike into
harmony with its own sober hues, as we
entered the room; and the sweet evening scent of
the flowers met us with its fragrant welcome
through the open glass doors. Good Mrs.
Vesey (always the first of the party to sit down)
took possession of an arm-chair in a corner, and
dozed off comfortably to sleep. At my request,
Miss Fairlie placed herself at the piano. As I
followed her to a seat near the instrument, I saw
Miss Halcombe retire into a recess of one of the
side windows, to proceed with the search through
her mother's letters by the last quiet rays of the
evening light.

How vividly that peaceful home-picture of the
drawing-room comes back to me while I write!
From the place where I sat, I could see Miss
Halcombe's graceful figure, half of it in soft
light, half in mysterious shadow, bending
intently over the letters in her lap; while, nearer
to me, the fair profile of the player at the piano
was just delicately defined against the faintly
deepening background of the inner wall of the
room. Outside, on the terrace, the clustering
flowers and long grasses and creepers waved so