And there finding a quiet grassy nook beneath the crest of the rocks, she sat down on the turf, and fell into a great meditation.
Rose Salterne was a thorough specimen of a West-coast maiden, full of passionate impulsive affections, and wild dreamy imaginations, a fit subject, as the North-Devon women are still, for all romantic and gentle superstitions.

Left early without mother's care, she had fed her fancy upon the legends and ballads of her native land, till she believed--what did she not believe ?--of mermaids and pixies, charms and witches, dreams and omens, and all that world of magic in which most of the countrywomen, and countrymen too, believed firmly enough but twenty years ago.

Then her father's house was seldom without some merchant, or sea-captain from foreign parts, who, like Othello, had his tales of-- "Antres vast, and deserts idle, Of rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads reach heaven." And,-- "And of the cannibals that each other eat, The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders." All which tales, she, like Desdemona, devoured with greedy ears, whenever she could "the house affairs with haste despatch." And when these failed, there was still boundless store of wonders open to her in old romances which were then to be found in every English house of the better class.

The Legend of King Arthur, Florice and Blancheflour, Sir Ysumbras, Sir Guy of Warwick, Palamon and Arcite, and the Romaunt of the Rose, were with her text-books and canonical authorities.

And lucky it was, perhaps, for her that Sidney's Arcadia was still in petto, or Mr.
Frank (who had already seen the first book or two in manuscript, and extolled it above all books past, present, or to come) would have surely brought a copy down for Rose, and thereby have turned her poor little flighty brains upside down forever.