Tom remained there standing, his hat in his hand, looking out of the window--longing to speak, his heart being full, yet not knowing how to begin, or how to go on if he had begun. Agnes worked on diligently, and looked out from the window at her side over the shorn grass and flower-beds, through the old trees in the foreground--over the tops of the sloping forest, with the back-ground of the grand Welsh mountains, and a glimpse of the estuary, here and there, seen through the leaves, stretching far off, in dim gold and gray. "You like that particular window," said Tom, making a wonderful effort; "I mean, why do you like always to sit there?" He spoke in as careless a way as he could, looking still out of his window, which commanded a different view. "This window! oh, my frame stands here always, and when one is accustomed to a particular place, it puts one out to change." Then Agnes dropped her pretty eyes again to her worsted, and worked and hummed very faintly a little air, and Tom's heart swelled within him, and he hummed as faintly the same gay air. "I thought perhaps you liked that view?" said Tom Sedley, arresting the music. She looked out again. "Well, it's very pretty." "The best from these windows; some people think, I believe, the prettiest view you have," said Tom, gathering force, "the water is always so pretty." "Yes, the water," she assented listlessly. "Quite a romantic view," continued Sedley, a little bitterly. "Yes, every pretty view _is_ romantic," she acquiesced, looking out for a moment again. "If one knew exactly what _romantic_ means--it's a word we use so often, and so vaguely." "And can't you define it, Agnes?" "Define it? I really don't think I could." "Well, that does surprise me." "You are so much more clever than I, of course it does." "No, quite the contrary; you are clever--I'm serious, I assure you--and I'm a dull fellow, and I know it quite well--_I_ can't define it; but _that_ doesn't surprise me." "Then we are both in the same case; but I won't allow it's stupidity--the idea is quite undefinable, and that is the real difficulty. You can't describe the perfume of a violet, but you know it quite well, and I really think flowers a more interesting subject than romance." "Oh, really! not, surely, than the romance of _that_ view. It _is_ so romantic!" "You seem quite in love with it," said she, with a little laugh, and began again with a grave face to stitch in the glory of her saint in celestial yellow worsted. "The water--yes--and the old trees of Ware, and just that tower, at the angle of the house." Agnes just glanced through her window, but said nothing. "I think," said Sedley, "if _I_ were peopling this scene, you know, I should put my hero in that Castle of Ware--that is, if I could invent a romance, which, of course, I couldn't." He spoke with a meaning, I think.