Her viands were fresh eggs, milk warm from the cow, and bread she had
herself baked. Even a lover might feed on such sweet food. This happy
valley and this cheerful settlement wonderfully touched the fancy of
Ferdinand. The season was mild and sunny, the air scented by the flowers
that rustled in the breeze, the bees soon came to rifle their sweetness,
and flights of white and blue pigeons ever and anon skimmed along the
sky from the neighbouring gables that were their dovecotes. Ferdinand
made a salutary, if not a plenteous meal; and when the table
was removed, exhausted by the fatigue and excitement of the last
four-and-twenty hours, he stretched himself at full length in the porch,
and fell into a gentle and dreamless slumber.

Hours elapsed before he awoke, vigorous indeed, and wonderfully
refreshed; but the sun had already greatly declined. To his
astonishment, as he moved, there fell from his breast a beautiful
nosegay. He was charmed with this delicate attention from his hostess,
or perhaps from her pretty daughter with those downcast eyes. There
seemed a refinement about the gift, and the mode of its offering, which
scarcely could be expected from these kind yet simple rustics. The
flowers, too, were rare and choice; geraniums such as are found only in
lady's bower, a cape jessamine, some musky carnations, and a rose that
seemed the sister of the one that he had borne from Ducie. They were
delicately bound together, too, by a bright blue riband, fastened by
a gold and turquoise pin. This was most strange; this was an adventure
more suitable to a Sicilian palace than an English farm-house; to the
gardens of a princess than the clustered porch of his kind hostess.
Ferdinand gazed at the bouquet with a glance of blended perplexity
and pleasure; then he entered the farmhouse and made enquiries of his
hostess, but they were fruitless. The pretty daughter with the downcast
eyes was there too; but her very admiration of the gift, so genuine and
unrestrained, proved, if testimony indeed were necessary, that she was
not his unknown benefactor: admirer, he would have said; but Ferdinand
was in love, and modest. All agreed no one, to their knowledge, had been
there; and so Ferdinand, cherishing his beautiful gift, was fain to quit
his new friends in as much perplexity as ever.

CHAPTER XIV.

_Containing an Incident Which Is the Termination of Most
Tales, though Almost the Beginning of the Present._

I