“It is a dream of yours, Mabyn,” her mother said, but there was an imaginative light in her fine eyes too.

“No, it is not a dream, mother, for there are so many people all wishing now that it should come about, in spite of these gloomy fancies.  What is there to prevent it when we are all agreed?—­Mr. Trelyon and I heading the list with our important alliance; and you, mother, would be so proud to see Wenna happy; and Mrs. Trelyon pets her as if she were a daughter already; and everybody—­every man, woman and child—­in Eglosilyan would rather see that come about than get a guinea apiece.  Oh, mother, if you could see the picture that I see just now!”

“It is a pretty picture, Mabyn,” her mother said, shaking her head.  “But when you think of everybody being agreed, you forget one, and that is Wenna herself.  Whatever she thinks fit and right to do, that she is certain to do, and all your alliances and friendly wishes won’t alter her decision, even if it should break her heart.  And indeed I hope the poor child won’t sink under the terrible strain that is on her:  what do you think of her looks, Mabyn?”

“They want mending—­yes, they want mending,” Mabyn admitted, apparently with some compunction, but then she added boldly, “and you know as well as I do, mother, that there is but the one way of mending them.”

CHAPTER XXX.

Fern in die welt.

If this story were not tied by its title to the duchy of Cornwall, it might be interesting enough to follow Mr. Roscorla into the new world that had opened all around him, and say something of the sudden shock his old habits had thus received, and of the quite altered views of his own life he had been led to form.  As matters stand, we can only pay him a flying visit.

He is seated in a verandah fronting a garden, in which pomegranates and oranges form the principal fruit.  Down below him some blacks are bringing provisions up to Yacca Farm along the cactus avenue leading to the gate.  Far away on his right the last rays of the sun are shining on the summit of Blue Mountain Peak, and along the horizon the reflected glow of the sky shines on the calm sea.  It is a fine, still evening; his cigar smells sweet in the air; it is a time for indolent dreaming and for memories of home.

But Mr. Roscorla is not so much enraptured by thoughts of home as he might be.  “Why,” he is saying to himself, “my life in Basset Cottage was no life at all, but only a waiting for death.  Day after day passed in that monotonous fashion:  what had one to look forward to but old age, sickness, and then the quiet of a coffin?  It was nothing but an hourly procession to the grave, varied by rabbit-shooting.  This bold breaking away from the narrow life of such a place has given me a new lease of existence.  Now I can look back with surprise on the dullness of that Cornish village, and on the regularity of habits