It tells everything, and yet nothing. It's so pure, and so
playful, and so tuneful, and so coy, yet so mysterious and _fatal_.
I sometimes think, Miss Lilias, I've seen this river spirit;
and she's like--very like you!'
And so he went on; and she was more silent and more a listener than
usual. I don't know all that was passing in pretty Lilias's fancy--in
her heart--near the hum of the waters and the spell of that musical
voice. Love speaks in allegories and a language of signs; looks and
tones tell his tale most truly. So Devereux's talk held her for a while
in a sort of trance, melancholy and delightful. There must be, of
course, the affinity--the rapport--the what you please to call it--to
begin with--it matters not how faint and slender; and then the spell
steals on and grows. See how the poor little woodbine, or the jessamine,
or the vine, will lean towards the rugged elm, appointed by Virgil, in
his epic of husbandry (I mean no pun) for their natural support--the
elm, you know it hath been said, is the gentleman of the forest:--see
all the little tendrils turn his way silently, and cling, and long years
after, maybe, clothe the broken and blighted tree with a fragrance and
beauty not its own.
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