She mused, and sighed, and turned to him with something pathetic in
her.

'The immensity of the subject you have engaged me on has completely
crushed my subject out of me! Yours is celestial; mine lamentably
human! And the less must give way to the greater.'

'But is it, in a human sense, and apart from macrocosmic magnitudes,
important?' he inquired, at last attracted by her manner; for he
began to perceive, in spite of his prepossession, that she had
really something on her mind.

'It is as important as personal troubles usually are.'

Notwithstanding her preconceived notion of coming to Swithin as
employer to dependant, as chatelaine to page, she was falling into
confidential intercourse with him. His vast and romantic endeavours
lent him a personal force and charm which she could not but
apprehend. In the presence of the immensities that his young mind
had, as it were, brought down from above to hers, they became
unconsciously equal. There was, moreover, an inborn liking in Lady
Constantine to dwell less on her permanent position as a county lady
than on her passing emotions as a woman.

'I will postpone the matter I came to charge you with,' she resumed,
smiling. 'I must reconsider it. Now I will return.'

'Allow me to show you out through the trees and across the fields?'