AUSTIN]. Why, this is loving,
Austin!

AUSTIN. He's so young!

GUENDOLEN. Young? Old enough, I think, to half surmise
He never had obtained an entrance here,
Were all this fear and trembling needed.

AUSTIN. Hush!
He reddens.

GUENDOLEN. Mark him, Austin; that's true love!
Ours must begin again.

TRESHAM. We'll sit, my lord.
Ever with best desert goes diffidence.
I may speak plainly nor be misconceived
That I am wholly satisfied with you
On this occasion, when a falcon's eye
Were dull compared with mine to search out faults,
Is somewhat. Mildred's hand is hers to give
Or to refuse.

MERTOUN. But you, you grant my suit?
I have your word if hers?

TRESHAM. My best of words
If hers encourage you. I trust it will.
Have you seen Lady Mildred, by the way?

MERTOUN. I... I... our two demesnes, remember, touch,
I have beer used to wander carelessly
After my stricken game: the heron roused
Deep in my woods, has trailed its broken wing
Thro' thicks and glades a mile in yours,--or else
Some eyass ill-reclaimed has taken flight
And lured me after her from tree to tree,
I marked not whither. I have come upon
The lady's wondrous beauty unaware,
And--and then... I have seen her.

GUENDOLEN [aside to AUSTIN]. Note that mode
Of faltering out that, when a lady passed,
He, having eyes, did see her! You had said--
"On such a day I scanned her, head to foot;
Observed a red, where red should not have been,
Outside her elbow; but was pleased enough
Upon the whole." Let such irreverent talk
Be lessoned for the future!

TRESHAM. What's to say
May be said briefly. She has never known
A mother's care; I stand for father too.
Her beauty is not strange to you, it seems--
You cannot know the good and tender heart,
Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy,
How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,
How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free
As light where friends are--how imbued with lore
The world most prizes, yet the simplest, yet
The... one might know I talked of Mildred--thus
We brothers talk!

MERTOUN. I thank you.

TRESHAM.