It is just after the hour of breakfast, and they have come forth in morning robes of light muslin—dresses suitable to the day and the season. Two handsome ponies are upon the lawn, its herbage dividing their attention with the horns of a pet stag, which now and then threaten to assail them.
All three, soon as perceiving the ladies, trot towards them; the ponies stretching out their necks to be patted; the cloven-hoofed creature equally courting caresses. They look especially to Miss Wynn, who is more their mistress.
On this particular morning she does not seem in the humour for dallying with them; nor has she brought out their usual allowance of lump sugar; but, after a touch with her delicate fingers, and a kindly exclamation, passes on, leaving them behind, to all appearance disappointed.
“Where are you going, Gwen?” asks the companion, seeing her step out straight, and apparently with thoughts preoccupied. Their arms are now disunited, the little incident with the animals having separated them.
“To the summer-house,” is the response. “I wish to have a look at the river. It should show fine this bright morning.”
And so it does; as both perceive after entering the pavilion, which commands a view of the valley, with a reach of the river above—the latter, under the sun, glistening like freshly polished silver.
Gwen views it through a glass—a binocular she has brought out with her; this of itself proclaiming some purpose aforethought, but not confided to the companion. It is only after she has been long holding it steadily to her eye, that the latter fancies there must be some object within its field of view more interesting than the Wye’s water, or the greenery on its banks.
“What is it?” she naïvely asks. “You see something?”
“Only a boat,” answers Gwen, bringing down the glass with a guilty look, as if conscious of being caught. “Some tourist, I suppose, making down to Tintern Abbey—like as not, a London cockney.”
The young lady is telling a “white lie.” She knows the occupant of that boat is nothing of the kind. From London he may be—she cannot tell—but certainly no sprig of cockneydom—unlike it as Hyperion to the Satyr; at least so she thinks. But she does not give her thought to the companion; instead, concealing it, she adds,—“How fond those town people are of touring it upon our Wye!”