"You are very young," he continued, "and wholly unacquainted with the world. I am certainly past the freshness of youth, and I should think there are not many of my age more thoroughly versed in the world's ways. And one of its ways, dear Lady Mitford, one of its never-failing and most repulsive ways, is to rob life of the glamour with which youth invests it; to lift up a corner of the silken curtain of the fairy temple and show the rough bare boards and wooden trestles behind it; to throw stumbling-blocks in the paths of happiness, and to drag down those now falling to a lower depth; to poison truth's well, to blacken innocence, and to sow distrust and misery broadcast,--these are among the world's ways. To be pure, noble, and beloved, is at once to provoke the world's hatred. Is it any wonder then that some of its emissaries are plotting against _you?_" A faint blush overspread her cheeks as she said, "I have done nothing to provoke them." "Pardon me," said Laurence, "you have offended in the three ways I have just pointed out: there are few who offer such a combination of offences. And the world will have revenge for all. To besmirch your purity, to lower the nobleness of your nature, are tasks which as yet it dare not attempt. But to prevent your being beloved,--by those whose love you have a right to claim,--is apparently, not really, far more easily done." "It is, indeed," cried poor Georgie, mournfully; "it is, indeed." "I said apparently, not really," continued Laurence. "To defeat such an attempt as this is the easiest thing in the world, if you only have the _savoir faire_, and will use the weapons in your armoury. Even in the most purely pastoral times, love in marriage was not all that was requisite for happiness. If Phyllis had done nothing but sit at Corydon's feet and worship him--if she had not been his companion and friend as well as his wife,--now talking to him about the crop in the forty-acre pasture, now telling him of the pigs eating the beech-nuts under that wide-spreading tree where that lazy Tityrus used to lie in the summer; moreover, if Corydon had not had his farm and flock to attend to,--he would at a very early period of their married life have left her solitary, while he sported with Amaryllis in the shade, or played with the tangle of Neaera's hair." He stopped as he marked her half-puzzled, half-frightened look. "Dear, dear Lady Mitford," he continued, "let me drop parable and mystery, and speak plainly to you. I am going away to-morrow or the next day, and should probably have left with this unsaid; but the accidental sight of your sorrow has emboldened me to speak, and--and you know I would say nothing which you should not hear." At the last words she seemed reassured, and with a little effort she said, "Speak on, pray, Colonel Alsager; I know I can trust you entirely."