Cornelia conducted Don Ferdinand under the ivy-crowned wall which sheltered her uncle's flower-garden. He admired the disposition of its parterres, and wondered how such beautiful chinasters, balsams, and holly-hocks, could bloom in so northern a climate. Alice led him to the aromatic spot where she had stationed her bees, and shewed him the beds of thyme, lavender, and other sweet herbs she had planted for their food. A little onward, raised on a low mound, stood an old sun-dial. Its bank was covered with mignonette; and many of Alice's industrious favorites were loading their wings with its extracted honey. She gathered a cluster of the flowers, and gave it to Ferdinand. Cornelia stooped to pluck a piece of sweetbriar, but the prickles prevented her: "I want my cousin's dextrous fingers here," said she with a smile. "Rather his bold ones," cried Alice as she saw Ferdinand break off the bough, and present it to her sister, leaving the thorns in his hand. "If he be as happy as I am, in being wounded in so sweet a cause," rejoined Ferdinand, "Mr. de Montemar is more to be envied than any man on earth." "How so?" enquired Alice, with an incredulous laugh, "I see no pleasure in being pricked and scratched for the prettiest flower in the world!" "But I do, sweet Alice!" said he with a gallant smile, as he presented another branch of the shrub to her. With a faint blush, she glanced at her sister, but Cornelia, thinking at the moment of the truant Louis, had not heard what was said; and Alice, seeing no surprise in her sister at the familiarity of the term, supposed it was a foreign custom; and unlatching a wicket which led to the pasture-land, bounded with the lightness of a fawn to the top of an adjacent hillock. She stood in the midst of its heathy grass, calling on her sister to follow her, for that was the spot whence they might shew Don Ferdinand the objects of the island to best advantage. Cornelia and her companion were soon by her side; and as the young Spaniard's excursive eye shot at once across the island's self, to the surrounding ocean, he perceived a cluster of rocks to the north, which shone in the noonday sun like gems on the belt of the horizon. "I have heard," said he, smiling, "that in days of yore, a band of wandering sages, sailing in these seas, discovered certain islands encompassed with floods of light, and inhabited by blissful souls. These fortunate adventurers called them the Islands of Blessedness. Since that time no traveller has been able to find them. But, as I am a countryman of the great Columbus, I venture to hope the happy discovery was reserved for me; and that _there they are_!"