For the most part she was merry, frank mirth passing into sly raillery; now and then she would turn sad, sighing, "Heigho, that I could stay in the sweet innocent country!" Or again she would show or ape an uneasy conscience, whispering, "Ah, that I were like your Mistress Barbara!" The next moment she would be laughing and jesting and mocking, as though life were nought but a great many-coloured bubble, and she the brightest-tinted gleam on it.
Are women so constant and men so forgetful, that all sympathy must go from me and all esteem be forfeited because, being of the age of eighteen years, I vowed to live for one lady only on a Monday and was ready to die for another on the Saturday?
Look back; bow your heads, and give me your hands, to kiss or to clasp! Let not you and I inquire What has been our past desire, On what shepherds you have smiled, Or what nymphs I have beguiled; Leave it to the planets too What we shall hereafter do; For the joys we now may prove, Take advice of present love.
Nay, I will not set my name to that in its fulness; Mr Waller is a little too free for one who has been nicknamed a Puritan to follow him to the end.

Yet there is a truth in it.

Deny it, if you will.

You are smiling, madame, while you deny.
It was a golden summer's evening when I, to whom the golden world was all a hell, came by tryst to the park of Quinton Manor, there to bid Cydaria farewell.

Mother and sisters had looked askance at me, the village gossiped, even the Vicar shook a kindly head.