"This is the game of life, Miss Clifford," he said, as he put the trout of more than three pounds' weight into the basket. "Rendered cautious and prudent by some sad experiences, we shrink from every thing that seems too easy of attainment, then, when we find something that Fate's cunning hand plays before our eyes as if to be withdrawn in a moment, we watch it with suspicious but greedy eagerness, till we think a moment more will lose it for ever, then dart at it blindly, and feel the hook in our jaws."
Mary Clifford smiled, and then looked grave; and Isabella laughed, exclaiming,
"The moral of fly-fishing! And a good lesson, I suppose, you mean for all over-cautious mammas--or did you mean it was a part of your own history? Captain Hayward, retrospective and prophetic, or was it a general disquisition upon man?"
"I am afraid man is the trout," said Beauchamp; "and not in one particular pursuit, but all: love, interest, ambition, every one alike. His course and end are generally the same."
"That speech of yours, fair lady, was so like a woman," said Ned Hayward, turning to Miss Slingsby; "if it were not that my hands were wet, I would presume upon knowing you as a child, and give you a good shake. I thought you had been brought up enough with men, to know that they are not always thinking of love and matrimony. You women have but one paramount idea, as to this life's concerns I mean, and you never hear any thing without referring it to that. However, after all, perhaps, it is natural:
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart.
'Tis woman's whole existence."
"Too sad a truth," replied Mary Clifford, thoughtfully; "perhaps it is of too little importance in man's eyes; of too much in woman's."
"And yet how terribly she sometimes trifles with it," said Beauchamp, in a still gloomier tone.
"Perhaps, you think, she trifles with every thing, Mr. Beauchamp," rejoined Isabella; "but men know so little of women, and see so little of women as they really are, that they judge the many from the few: and we must forgive them; nevertheless, even if it be true that they do trifle with it, it is not the least proof that they do not feel it. All beings are fond of sporting with what is bright and dangerous: the moth round the candle, the child with the penknife, and man with ambition."
"All mankind," said Ned Hayward, "men and women alike, get merrily familiar with that which is frequently presented to their thoughts. Look at the undertaker, or the sexton, how he jests with his fat corpse, and only screws his face into a grim look when he has the world's eye upon him; then jumps upon the hearse and canters back, to get drunk and joyous at the next public-house."