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.

“Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book,” she continued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening.  “Pray, do not!”

The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes.  No sooner was the spell of contact broken than he jumped in.  The water was still troubled and discoloured by his introductory adventure, and, though he ducked his head with the spirit of a dabchick, the book was missing.  A scrap of paper floating from the bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire had caught its edges and it had flown from one adverse element to the other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land disconsolately, to hear Miranda’s murmured mixing of thanks and pretty expostulations.