udden silken stirring touched my inner nature through.

XIII.

I looked upward and beheld her: with a calm and regnant spirit,
Slowly round she swept her eyelids, and said clear before them all--
"Have you such superfluous honour, sir, that able to confer it
You will come down, Mister Bertram, as my guest to Wycombe Hall?"

XIV.

Here she paused; she had been paler at the first word of her speaking,
But, because a silence followed it, blushed somewhat, as for shame:
Then, as scorning her own feeling, resumed calmly--"I am seeking
More distinction than these gentlemen think worthy of my claim.

XV.

"Ne'ertheless, you see, I seek it--not because I am a woman,"
(Here her smile sprang like a fountain and, so, overflowed her mouth)
"But because my woods in Sussex have some purple shades at gloaming
Which are worthy of a king in state, or poet in his youth.

XVI.

"I invite you, Mister Bertram, to no scene for worldly speeches--
Sir, I scarce should dare--but only where God asked the thrushes first:
And if _you_ will sing beside them, in the covert of my beeches,
I will thank you for the woodlands,--for the human world, at worst."

XVII.

Then she smiled around right childly, then she gazed around right
queenly,
And I bowed--I could not answer; alternated light and gloom--
While as one who quells the lions, with a steady eye serenely,
She, with level fronting eyelids, passed out stately from the room.

XVIII.

Oh, the blessed woods of Sussex, I can hear them still around me,
With their leafy tide of greenery still rippling up the wind!
Oh, the cursed woods of Sussex! where the hunter's arrow found me,
When a fair face and a tender voice had made me mad and blind!

XIX.

In that ancient hall of Wycombe thronged the numerous guests invited,
And the lovely London ladies trod the floors with gliding feet;
And their voices low with fashion, not with feeling, softly freighted
All the air about the windows with elastic laughters sweet.

XX.

For at eve the open windows flung their light out on the terrace
Which the floating orbs of curtains did with gradual shadow sweep,
While the swans upon the river, fed at morning by the heiress,
Trembled downward through their snowy wings at music in their sleep.

XXI.

And there evermore was music