Such a nature is not at first sympathetic.

It has in it some of the unconscious cruelty which belongs to nature itself, whose sunshine never pales at human trouble.

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow.

Moreover, a lively girl of eighteen, looking at life out of eyes which bewilder others with their brightness, does not always see the world truly, and is sometimes judged to be heartless when she is only immature.
Nothing was further from Diana's thoughts than that any grave trouble was overhanging her lover's mind--for her lover she very well knew that James was, and she had arranged beforehand to herself very pretty little comedies of life, to be duly enacted in the long vacation, in which James was to appear as the suitor, and she, not too soon nor with too much eagerness, was at last to acknowledge to him how much he was to her.

But meanwhile he was not to be too presumptuous.