Read it through once

-- St. 23. With me: the speaker continues, youth led:--we are told whither, in St. 25, v. 4, “to an age so blest that, by its side, youth seems the waste instead”. I will speak now: up to this point his reflections have been silent, his wife, the while, reading, mutely, by fire-light, his heart knows how, that is, with her heart secretly responsive to his own. The mutual responsiveness of their hearts is expressed in St. 24.