If there are in it rogues that look like honest men, how
is any one, without a special gift of insight, to be always sure of
the honest man? Even the man whom a woman loves best will sometimes
tear her heart to pieces! I will give you all the proof you can
desire.--And lest the tempter should say I made up the proof itself
between now and to-morrow morning, I will fetch it at once."
"Oh, Mr. Grant, spare me! I am not, indeed I am not so bad as that!"
"Who can tell when or whence the doubt may wake again, or what may
wake it!"
"At least let me explain a little before you go," she said.
"Certainly," he answered, reseating himself, in compliance with her
example.
"Miss Graeme told me that you had never seen a garden like theirs
before!"
"I never did. There are none such, I fancy, in our part of the
country."
"Nor in our neighbourhood either."
"Then what is surprising in it?"
"Nothing in that. But is there not something in your being able to
write a poem like that about a garden such as you had never seen?
One would say you must have been familiar with it from childhood to
be able so to enter into the spirit of the place!"
"Perhaps if I had been familiar with it from childhood, that might
have disabled me from feeling the spirit of it, for then might it
not have looked to me as it looked to those in whose time such
gardens were the fashion? Two things are necessary--first, that
there should be a spirit in a place, and next that the place should
be seen by one whose spirit is capable of giving house-room to its
spirit.
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