something bordering upon pleasure. Lapped in the apathetic indifference
of his nature, he leaned back in the carriage, enjoying the bright
weather that attended their journey, and sensible--for he was one of fine
and cultivated taste--of whatever beauties of nature or remains of art
varied their course. A companion of this sort was the most agreeable
that two persons never needing a third could desire; he left them
undisturbed to the intoxication of their mutual presence; he marked not
the interchange of glances; he listened not to the whisper, the low
delicious whisper, with which the heart speaks its sympathy to heart. He
broke not that charmed silence which falls over us when the thoughts are
full, and words leave nothing to explain; that repose of feeling; that
certainty that we are understood without the effort of words, which makes
the real luxury of intercourse and the true enchantment of travel. What
a memory hours like these bequeath, after we have settled down into the
calm occupation of common life! How beautiful, through the vista of
years, seems that brief moonlight track upon the waters of our youth!

And Trevylyan's nature, which, as I have said before, was naturally hard
and stern, which was hot, irritable, ambitious, and prematurely tinctured
with the policy and lessons of the world, seemed utterly changed by the
peculiarities of his love. Every hour, every moment was full of incident
to him; every look of Gertrude's was entered in the tablets of his heart;
so that his love knew no languor, it required no change: he was absorbed
in it,--_it was himself_! And he was soft, and watchful as the step of a
mother by the couch of her sick child; the lion within him was tamed by
indomitable love; the sadness, the presentiment, that was mixed with all
his passion for Gertrude, filled him too with that poetry of feeling
which is the result of thoughts weighing upon us, and not to be expressed
by ordinary language. In this part of their journey, as I find by the
date, were the following lines written; they are to be judged as the