I really feel as if my heart had been in a limekiln. All its
kingly feelings are so burnt up by the malignant influences of Mrs.
Downe Wright; while you," continued she, as they strolled into the
gardens, "are as cool, and as sweet, and as sorrowful as these violets,"
gathering some still wet with an April shower. "How delicious, after
such a mental _sirocco,_ to feel the pure air and hear the birds sing,
and look upon the flowers and blossoms, and sit here, and bask in the
sun from laziness to walk into the shade. You must needs acknowledge,
Mary, that spring in England is a much more amiable season than in your
ungentle clime."
This was the second spring Mary had seen set in, in England. But the
first had been wayward and backward as the seasons of her native
climate. The present was such a one as poets love to paint. Nature was
in all its first freshness and beauty--the ground was covered with
flowers, the luxuriant hedgerows were white with blossoms, the air was
impregnated with the odours of the gardens and orchards. Still Mary
sighed as she thought of Lochmarlie--its wild tangled woods, with here
and there a bunch of primroses peeping forth from amidst moss and
withered ferns--its gurgling rills, blue lakes, and rocks, and
mountains--all rose to view; and she felt that, even amid fairer scenes,
and beneath brighter suns, her heart would still turn with fond regret
to the land of her birth.
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