Her brows, thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of the blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long and level:  you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights of earth, and by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a statue to the gazer.  Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot out, giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes, a mystery of meaning—­more than brain was ever meant to fathom:  richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince Ferdinand.  For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts of colour on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle, shall match the depth of its lightest look?

Prince Ferdinand was also fair.  In his slim boating-attire his figure looked heroic.  His hair, rising from the parting to the right of his forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish called his plume, fell away slanting silkily to the temples across the nearly imperceptible upward curve of his brows there—­felt more than seen, so slight it was—­and gave to his profile a bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a flattering charm.  An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and far with her!  He leaned a little forward, drinking her in with all his eyes, and young Love has a thousand.  Then truly the System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head, and let it fly, when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son again, and said to the world, “Match him!” Such keen bliss as the youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has powers of soul in him to experience.

“O Women!” says The Pilgrim’s Scrip, in one of its solitary outbursts, “Women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake! how soon are you not to learn that you have taken bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the putrescent gold that attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!”

If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not Prospero, and was not present, or their fates might have been different.

So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda spoke, and they came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.

She spoke to thank him for his aid.  She used quite common simple words; and used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning:  but to him she was uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to be chronicled.

The couple were again mute.  Suddenly Miranda, with an exclamation of anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows playing over her lovely face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, “My book! my book!” and ran to the bank.

Prince Ferdinand was at her side.  “What have you lost?” he said.

“My book!” she answered, her delicious curls swinging across her shoulders to the stream.  Then turning to him, “Oh, no, no! let me entreat you not to,” she said; “I do not so very much mind losing it.”  And in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gentle hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.