But now her voice was silent of spontaneous song, subdued in conversation, full fraught with a suppressed deeper feeling. The very beauty of the fair face was changed, soberer, more hopeful, farther seeing, full no longer of an earthly, but more with something of an angel light. The spirit had spoken within her, the statue had learned that it had a soul. And Guendolen had noted, yet not fully understood the change or its nature. More than once she had called her to her bridle-rein and conversed with her, and tried to draw her out, in vain. At last, she put the question frankly-- "You are quieter, Edith, calmer, sadder, it seems to me," she said, "than I have ever seen you, since I first came to Waltheofstow. I have done all that lies in me to make you happy, and I should be sorry that you were sad or discontented." "Sad, discontented! Oh! no, lady, no!" she replied, smiling among her tears. "Only too happy--too happy, to be loud or joyous. All happiest things, I think, have a touch of melancholy in them. Do you think, lady, yonder little stream," pointing to one which wound along by the roadside, now dancing over shelvy rapids, now sleeping in silent eddies, "is less happy where it lies calm and quiet, reflecting heaven's face from its deep bosom, and smiling with its hundred tranquil dimples, than where it frolics and sings among the pebbles, or leaps over the rocks which toss it into noisy foam-wreaths? No! lady, no. There it gathers its merriment and its motion, from the mere force of outward causes; here it collects itself from the depth of its own heart, and manifests its joy and love, and thanks God in silence. It is so with me, Lady Guendolen. My heart is too full for music, but not too shallow to reflect boundless love and gratitude forever." The lady smiled, and made some slight reply, but she was satisfied; for it was evident that the girl's poetry and gratitude both came direct from her heart; and in the smile of the noble demoiselle there was a touch of half-satiric triumph, as she turned her quick glance to Sir Yvo, who had heard all that passed, and asked him, slyly, "And do you, indeed, think, gentle father, that these Saxons are so hopelessly inferior, that they are fitting for nothing but mere toil; or is this the mere inspiration that springs from the sense of freedom?"