Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 2.djvu/125

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OF WILDFELL HALL.
115

with the trees that crowd about its bank, some gracefully bending to kiss its waters, some rearing their stately heads high above, but stretching their wide arms over its margin, all faithfully mirrored far, far down in its glassy depth—though sometimes the images are partially broken by the sport of aquatic insects, and sometimes, for a moment, the whole is shivered into trembling fragments by a transient breeze that swept the surface too roughly,—still I have no pleasure; for the greater the happiness that nature sets before me, the more I lament that he is not here to taste it: the greater the bliss we might enjoy together, the more I feel our present wretchedness apart (yes, ours; he must be wretched, though he may not know it;) and the more my senses are pleased, the more my heart is oppressed; for he keeps it with him confined amid the dust and smoke of London,—perhaps, shut up within the walls of his own abominable club.