"Would that prevent my taking to law?" Gilbert asked, with a smile.
"No; I don't know exactly why it should do so," she said. "Melville talks so much about things which are right for a gentleman to do, and things which a gentleman cannot do; and then he dresses so fashionably, and people remark upon it."
"I don't wonder," Gilbert said, laughing; "but that part of his proceedings is only laughable. Many men are fops in their youth who tone down wonderfully when they get old. Let us hope it will be so with him."
"You know," Joyce said, "that Melville ought to spare father expenses instead of adding to them. There have been two bad harvests and hard winters, and Mr. Watson, the steward, is getting rather past his work. Melville ought to take that place now, and save father, for there is Ralph to be educated, and he ought to have the best, for he is so studious; and then there are the three other boys, and poor Piers is lame, and they all want something."
"You don't seem to want anything yourself," Mr. Arundel said.
"No: I have a happy home and everything is beautiful about me. What can I want?"
"Not to go to London, or Bath, or to see the world?" he asked.
"I think," said Joyce, simply, "if it came in my way—I mean if there was plenty of money—I should like to travel a little. Can you believe that I have only been to Bath once and to Bristol twice in my life? and I am nearly eighteen. My Cousin Charlotte, who lives at Wells with my aunt, has been to school in Bath, but father never wished me to go to school, so I have no accomplishments. But I need not talk any more about myself, it cannot be interesting."
Gilbert Arundel was beginning a speech to the effect that what she said was most interesting to him, but somehow it died away on his lips. The sweet earnestness of the face which he had been watching while she spoke, the entire absence of self-consciousness, seemed to lift her above the level of compliments or flattery, which the gentlemen of the time considered the rightful inheritance of the young ladies, with whom they trifled for an hour's amusement.
As she sat with her face towards the beautiful landscape over which the westering sun was casting its level rays, she seemed so far above him and bearing the "lily in her hand" of which a poet of later days than those in which Joyce lived has said that—