CHAPTER IV.

A WOMAN TOO OFTEN REASONS FROM HER HEART--HENCE TWO-THIRDS OF HER
MISTAKES AND HER TROUBLES. A MAN OF GENIUS, TOO, OFTEN REASONS FROM
HIS HEART-WENCE, ALSO, TWO-THIRDS OF HIS TROUBLES AND MISTAKES.
WHEREFORE, BETWEEN WOMAN AND GENIUS THERE IS A SYMPATHETIC AFFINITY;
EACH HAS SOME INTUITIVE COMPREHENSION OF THE SECRETS OF THE OTHER,
AND THE MORE FEMININE THE WOMAN, THE MORE EXQUISITE THE GENIUS, THE
MORE SUBTLE THE INTELLIGENCE BETWEEN THE TWO. BUT NOTE WELL THAT
THIS TACIT UNDERSTANDING BECOMES OBSCURED, IF HUMAN LOVE PASS ACROSS
ITS RELATIONS. SHAKESPEARE INTERPRETS ARIGHT THE MOST INTRICATE
RIDDLES IN WOMAN. A WOMAN WAS THE FIRST TO INTERPRET ARIGHT THE ART
THAT IS LATENT IN SHAKESPEARE. BUT DID ANNE HATHAWAY AND
SHAKESPEARE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER?

Unobserved by the two young people, Lady Montfort sate watching them as
they moved along the river banks. She was seated where Lionel had first
seen her--in the kind of grassy chamber that had been won from the
foliage and the sward, closed round with interlaced autumnal branches,
save where it opened towards the water. If ever woman's brain can
conceive and plot a scheme thoroughly pure from one ungentle, selfish
thread in its web, in such a scheme had Caroline Montfort brought
together those two fair young natures. And yet they were not uppermost
in her thoughts as she now gazed on them; nor was it wholly for them that
her eyes were filled with tears at once sweet, yet profoundly mournful--
holy, and yet intensely human.