_Andre_. A lady, well you would call her so perchance. Such ladies used
to spring from the fairy nut-shells, in the old time, when the kings'
son lacked a bride; and if this were Windsor forest that stretches about
us here, I might fancy, perchance, some royal one had wandered out, to
cool the day's glow in her cheek, and nurse her love-dream; but here, in
this untrodden wilderness, unless your ladies here spring up like
flowers, or drop down on invisible pinions from above, how, in the name
of reason, came she here?

_Mait_. On the invisible pinions of thine own lady-loving fancy; none
otherwise, trust me.

_Andre_. Come, come,--see for yourself. On my word I was a little
startled though, as my eye first lighted on her, suddenly, in that
lonesome spot. There she sat, so bright and still, like some creature of
the leaves and waters, such as the old Greeks fabled, that my first
thought was to worship her; my next--of you, but I could not leave the
spot until I had sketched this; I stood unseen, within a yard of her;
for I could see her soft breath stirring the while. See, the scene
itself was a picture,--the dark glen, the lonesome little lodge, on the
very margin of the fairy lake--here she sat, motionless as marble; this
bunch of roses had dropped from her listless hand, and you would have
thought some tragedy of ancient sorrow, were passing before her, in the
invisible element, with such a fixed and lofty sadness she gazed into
it. But of course, of course, it is nothing to _your_ eye; for me, it
will serve to bring the whole out at my leisure. Indeed, the air, I
think, I have caught a little as it is.

_Mait_. A little--you may say it. She is there, is she?--sorrowful;
well, what is't to me?