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-differing 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 her, 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