Lady Gertrude talked incessantly and agreeably, but I was a very dull companion, and, being in a musing humour, would much rather have been alone. At length we saw the moon shining on the white walls of the villa. “I fear we have tired you with our childish party of pleasure,” said Lady Gertrude, with a malicious fling at my silence. “Perhaps I am tired,” I replied, ingenuously. “Pleasures are fatiguing, especially when one is not accustomed to them.” “Satirist!” said Lady Gertrude. “You come from the brilliant excitement of London, and what may be pleasure to us must be _ennui_ to you.” “Nay, Lady Gertrude, let me tell you what a very clever and learned man, a Minister of State, said the other day at one of those great public ceremonial receptions which are the customary holidays of a Minister of State. ‘Life,’ said he, pensively, ‘would be tolerably agreeable if it were not for its amusements.’ He spoke of those ‘brilliant excitements,’ as you call them, which form the amusements of capitals. He would not have spoken so of the delight which Man can extract from a holiday with Nature. But tell me, you who have played so considerable a part in the world of fashion, do you prefer the drawing-rooms of London to the log-house by the lake?” “Why,” said Lady Gertrude, honestly, and with a half-sigh; “I own I should be glad if Percival would consent to spend six months in the year, or even three, in London. However, what he likes I like. Providence has made us women of very pliable materials.” “Has it?” said I; “that information is new to me—one lives to learn.” And here, as the pony stopped at the porch, I descended to offer my arm to the amiable charioteer. Nothing worth recording took place the rest of the evening. Henry and the Painter played at billiards, Lady Gertrude and the Librarian at backgammon. Clara went into the billiard-room, seating herself there with her work: by some fond instinct of her loving nature she felt as if she ought not to waste the minutes yet vouchsafed to her—she was still with him who was all in all to her!