When she comes upon her lover staggering outside the tavern with his sodden comrades,[223] with what simplicity she shudders:
I never saw a drunken man before;
But these I think are so....
My state is such, I know not how to think
A prayer fit for me; only I could move
That never Maiden more might be in love!
When, rescued from thieves in the country, she finds that her rescuer is even more a peril,[224] with what childlike trust she appeals:
Pray you, leave me here
Just as you found me, a poor innocent,
And Heaven will bless you for it!
When again deserted, with what pathos she sighs:
"I'll sit me down and weep;
All things have cast me from 'em but the earth.
The evening comes, and every little flower
Droops now, as well as I!"
And, finally, when she has rediscovered Ricardo, and conquered his self-reproach by her forgiveness, which is "to love you," with what admirable touch of nature and delicious humour she gives verisimilitude to her story and herself:[225]
Methinks I would not now, for any thing,
But you had mist me: I have made a story
Will serve to waste many a winter's fire,
When we are old. I'll tell my daughters then
The miseries their Mother had in love,
And say, "My girls, be wiser"; yet I would not
Have had more wit myself.
Ricardo, too, is a creative study in the development of personality; and the rural scenes and characters are convincing.