"He is certainly much in love with you," said one, who was taller and darker than her companion. As she spoke, she gave back a letter which she had been reading. "Yes, I think he is," said the other, reflectively, replacing it in its envelope. "I suppose you are so accustomed to it, Beatrice, that it does not make much impression upon you," continued the first speaker, her glance as she spoke resting not upon her companion, but upon the lovely levels beneath, with the violet-hued mountains rising softly up round about them, so softly that one forgot they were mountains until the eye caught the gleam of snow on the summits towards the east. There was a pause after this question, and it lasted so long that the questioner at length removed her eyes from the landscape and turned them upon her friend; to her surprise she saw that the friend was blushing. "Why, Beatrice!" she exclaimed, "is it possible--" "No," said Beatrice, "it is not possible. I know that I am blushing; but you must not think too much of that. I am not as strong as I was, and blush at everything; I am taking iron for it. In the present case, it only means that--" She paused. "That you like him," suggested the other, smiling. "I like a number of persons," said Mrs. Lovell, tranquilly, gazing in her turn down the broad, slightly winding valley, dotted with its little white villages, and ending in a soft blue haze, through which the tawny Arno, its course marked by a line of tall, slender, lightly foliaged, seemingly branchless trees, like tall rods in leaf, went onward towards the west. "I know you do," said the first speaker. "And I really wish," she added, with a slight touch of vehemence, "that your time would come--that I should see you at last liking some one person really and deeply and jealously, and to the exclusion of all the rest." "I don't know why you should wish me unhappiness, Margaret. You have beautiful theories, I know; but in my _experience_" (Mrs. Lovell slightly underlined this word as if in opposition to the "theories" of her friend) "the people who have those deeper sort of feelings you describe are almost always very unhappy." Margaret turned her head, and looked towards the waving line of the Carrara mountains; in her eyes there was the reflection of a sudden inward pain. But she knew that she could indulge in this momentary expression of feeling; the mountains would not betray her, and the friend by her side did not realize that anything especial could have happened to "Margaret." In excuse for Mrs. Lovell it may be said that so much that was very especial had always happened, and still continued to happen, to her, that she had not much time for the more faintly colored episodes of other people.