h me completed the distaste that her
protectors felt for her; and every error was magnified by them into crimes.
If she had been bred in that sphere of life to which by inheritance the
delicate framework of her mind and person was adapted, she would have been
the object almost of adoration, for her virtues were as eminent as her
defects. All the genius that ennobled the blood of her father illustrated
hers; a generous tide flowed in her veins; artifice, envy, or meanness,
were at the antipodes of her nature; her countenance, when enlightened by
amiable feeling, might have belonged to a queen of nations; her eyes were
bright; her look fearless.

Although by our situation and dispositions we were almost equally cut off
from the usual forms of social intercourse, we formed a strong contrast to
each other. I always required the stimulants of companionship and applause.
Perdita was all-sufficient to herself. Notwithstanding my lawless habits,
my disposition was sociable, hers recluse. My life was spent among tangible
realities, hers was a dream. I might be said even to love my enemies, since
by exciting me they in a sort bestowed happiness upon me; Perdita almost
disliked her friends, for they interfered with her visionary moods. All my
feelings, even of exultation and triumph, were changed to bitterness, if
unparticipated; Perdita, even in joy, fled to loneliness, and could go on
from day to day, neither expressing her emotions, nor seeking a
fellow-feeling in another mind. Nay, she could love and dwell with
tenderness on the look and voice of her friend, while her demeanour
expressed the coldest reserve. A sensation with her became a sentiment, and
she never spoke until she had mingled her perceptions of outward objects
with others which were the native growth of her own mind. She was like a
fruitful soil that imbibed the airs and dews of heaven, and gave them forth
again to light in loveliest forms of fruits and flowers; but then she was
often dark and rugged as that soil, raked up, and new sown with unseen
seed.

She dwelt in a cottage whose trim grass-plat sloped down to the waters of
the lake of Ulswater; a beech wood stretched up the hill behind, and a
purling brook gently falling from the acclivity ran through poplar-shaded
banks into the lake. I lived with a farmer whose house was built higher up
among the hills: a dark crag rose behind it, and, exposed to the north, the
snow lay in its crevices the summer through.