s, a fit
subject, as the North-Devon women are still, for all romantic and gentle
superstitions. Left early without mother's care, she had fed her fancy
upon the legends and ballads of her native land, till she believed--what
did she not believe?--of mermaids and pixies, charms and witches,
dreams and omens, and all that world of magic in which most of the
countrywomen, and countrymen too, believed firmly enough but twenty
years ago. Then her father's house was seldom without some merchant, or
sea-captain from foreign parts, who, like Othello, had his tales of--

"Antres vast, and deserts idle,
Of rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads reach heaven."

And,--

"And of the cannibals that each other eat,
The anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

All which tales, she, like Desdemona, devoured with greedy ears,
whenever she could "the house affairs with haste despatch." And when
these failed, there was still boundless store of wonders open to her in
old romances which were then to be found in every English house of the
better class. The Legend of King Arthur, Florice and Blancheflour, Sir
Ysumbras, Sir Guy of Warwick, Palamon and Arcite, and the Romaunt of the
Rose, were with her text-books and canonical authorities. And lucky it
was, perhaps, for her that Sidney's Arcadia was still in petto, or Mr.
Frank (who had already seen the first book or two in manuscript, and
extolled it above all books past, present, or to come) would have surely
brought a copy down for Rose, and thereby have turned her poor little
flighty brains upside down forever. And with her head full of these, it
was no wonder if she had likened herself of late more than once to some
of those peerless princesses of old, for whose fair hand paladins and
kaisers thundered against each other in tilted field; and perhaps she
would not have been sorry (provided, of course, no one was killed) if
duels, and passages of arms in honor of her, as her father reasonably
dreaded, had actually taken place.

For Rose was not only well aware that she was wooed, but found the said
wooing (and little shame to her) a very pleasant process. Not that she
had any wish to break hearts: she did not break her heart for any of her
admirers, and why should they break theirs for her? They were all very
charming, each in his way (the gentlemen, at least; for she had long
since learnt to turn up her nose at merchants a