Hence, notwithstanding his love of the economics of gypsy life, his gypsy women are for the most part no more than scenic characters; they clothe and beautify the scene, but they have little dramatic force about them.

And when he comes to delineate a heroine, Isopel Berners, she is physically the very opposite of a Romany chi.
Fewer words will suffice to describe Isopel's first impressions of her future partner in the dingle.

She unmistakably regarded him as a chaffing fellow who was not quite right in his head; and there is reason for believing, that, though she came to entertain a genuine regard for the young 'squire,' her opinions as to the condition of his brain underwent no sensible modification.

She herself is fairly explicit on this subject: she seems indeed to have arrived at the deliberate conviction that, if not abnormally selfish, he was at any rate fundamentally mad; and there was perhaps a germ of truth in the conclusion, sufficient at any rate to colour Lombroso's theory of the inherent madness of men of genius.

One of the testimonies that we have as to Borrow's later life at Oulton is to the effect that he got bewildered at times and fancied himself Wodin; but the substratum of sanity is strongly exhibited in the remedy which he himself applied.
"What do you think I do when I get bewildered after this fashion?
I go out to the sty and listen to the grunting of the pigs until I get back to myself." {49} Of Isopel's history we know extremely little, save what she herself tells us.