CHAPTER XX 272
This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in the wall bordering the orchard. I, supposing he had done with me, prepared to return to the house; again, however, I heard him call " Jane!" He had opened feel portal and stood at it, waiting for me.
" Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments," he said; " that house is a mere dungeon: don ' t you feel it so?"
" It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir."
" The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes," he answered; " and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now HERE "( he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) " all is real, sweet, and pure."
He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees, and cherry trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs. They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams, followed by a lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun was just entering the dappled east, and his light illumined the wreathed and dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks under them.
" Jane, will you have a flower?" He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to me. " Thank you, sir."
" Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light clouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm-- this placid and balmly atmosphere?"
" I do, very much."