GENIUS THERE IS A SYMPATHETIC AFFINITY;
EACH HAS SOME INTUITIVE COMPREHENSION OF THE SECRETS OF THE OTHER,
AND THE MORE FEMININE THE WOMAN, THE MORE EXQUISITE THE GENIUS, THE
MORE SUBTLE THE INTELLIGENCE BETWEEN THE TWO. BUT NOTE WELL THAT
THIS TACIT UNDERSTANDING BECOMES OBSCURED, IF HUMAN LOVE PASS ACROSS
ITS RELATIONS. SHAKESPEARE INTERPRETS ARIGHT THE MOST INTRICATE
RIDDLES IN WOMAN. A WOMAN WAS THE FIRST TO INTERPRET ARIGHT THE ART
THAT IS LATENT IN SHAKESPEARE. BUT DID ANNE HATHAWAY AND
SHAKESPEARE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER?

Unobserved by the two young people, Lady Montfort sate watching them as
they moved along the river banks. She was seated where Lionel had first
seen her--in the kind of grassy chamber that had been won from the
foliage and the sward, closed round with interlaced autumnal branches,
save where it opened towards the water. If ever woman's brain can
conceive and plot a scheme thoroughly pure from one ungentle, selfish
thread in its web, in such a scheme had Caroline Montfort brought
together those two fair young natures. And yet they were not uppermost
in her thoughts as she now gazed on them; nor was it wholly for them
that her eyes were filled with tears at once sweet, yet profoundly
mournful--holy, and yet intensely human.

Women love to think themselves uncomprehended--nor often without reason
in that foible; for man, howsoever sagacious, rarely does entirely
comprehend woman, howsoever simple. And in this her sex has the
advantage over ours. Our hearts are bare to their eyes, even though they
can never know what have been our lives. But we may see every action
of their lives, guarded and circumscribed in conventional forms, while
their hearts will have many mysteries to which we can never have the
key. But, in more than the ordinary sense of the word, Caroline Montfort
never had been a woman uncomprehended. Nor even in her own sex did she
possess one confidante. Only the outward leaves of that beautiful flower
opened to the sunlight. The leaves round the core were gathered fold
upon fold closely as when life itself was in the bud.

As all the years of her wedded existence her heart had been denied the
natural household vents, so by some strange and unaccountable chance her
intellect also seemed restrained and pent from its proper freedom and
play. During those barren years, she had read--she had pondered--she had
enjoyed a commune with those whose minds instruct others