The happiness that a generous spirit derives from the belief that it exists in others is often greater than the primary happiness itself. The gardener thought ‘How happy they are!’ and the thought made him happier than they. Coming out of the forcing-house again, she was on the point of returning indoors, when a feeling that these moments of solitude would be her last of freedom induced her to prolong them a little, and she stood still, unheeding the wintry aspect of the curly-leaved plants, the straw-covered beds, and the bare fruit-trees around her. The garden, no part of which was visible from the house, sloped down to a narrow river at the foot, dividing it from the meadows without. A man was lingering along the public path on the other side of the river; she fancied she knew the form. Her resolutions, taken in the presence of Owen, did not fail her now. She hoped and prayed that it might not be one who had stolen her heart away, and still kept it. Why should he have reappeared at all, when he had declared that he went out of her sight for ever? She hastily hid herself, in the lowest corner of the garden close to the river. A large dead tree, thickly robed in ivy, had been considerably depressed by its icy load of the morning, and hung low over the stream, which here ran slow and deep. The tree screened her from the eyes of any passer on the other side. She waited timidly, and her timidity increased. She would not allow herself to see him--she would hear him pass, and then look to see if it had been Edward. But, before she heard anything, she became aware of an object reflected in the water from under the tree which hung over the river in such a way that, though hiding the actual path, and objects upon it, it permitted their reflected images to pass beneath its boughs. The reflected form was that of the man she had seen further off, but being inverted, she could not definitely characterize him. He was looking at the upper windows of the House--at hers--was it Edward, indeed? If so, he was probably thinking he would like to say one parting word. He came closer, gazed into the stream, and walked very slowly. She was almost certain that it was Edward. She kept more safely hidden. Conscience told her that she ought not to see him. But she suddenly asked herself a question: ‘Can it be possible that he sees my reflected image, as I see his? Of course he does!’ He was looking at her in the water. She could not help herself now. She stepped forward just as he emerged from the other side of the tree and appeared erect before her. It was Edward Springrove--till the inverted vision met his eye, dreaming no more of seeing his Cytherea there than of seeing the dead themselves. ‘Cytherea!’ ‘Mr. Springrove,’ she returned, in a low voice, across the stream. He was the first to speak again. ‘Since we have met, I want to tell you something, before we become quite as strangers to each other.’