After this communication there was a short pause. "What a beautiful place this is!" said I, with great enthusiasm. Lord Glenmorris was pleased with the compliment, simple as it was.
"Yes," said he, "it is, and I have made it still more so than you have yet been able to perceive."
"You have been planting, probably, on the other side of the park?"
"No," said my uncle, smiling; "Nature had done every thing for this spot when I came to it, but one, and the addition of that one ornament is the only real triumph which art ever can achieve."
"What is it?" asked I; "oh, I know—water."
"You are mistaken," answered Lord Glenmorris; "it is the ornament of— happy faces."
I looked up to my uncle's countenance in sudden surprise. I cannot explain how I was struck with the expression which it wore: so calmly bright and open!—it was as if the very daylight had settled there.
"You don't understand this at present, Henry," said he, after a moment's silence; "but you will find it, of all rules for the improvement of property, the easiest to learn. Enough of this now. Were you not au desespoir at leaving Paris?"
"I should have been, some months ago; but when I received my mother's summons, I found the temptations of the continent very light in comparison with those held out to me here."
"What, have you already arrived at that great epoch, when vanity casts off its first skin, and ambition succeeds to pleasure? Why—but thank Heaven that you have lost my moral—your dinner is announced."