‘Your baby lives!’ she cried; ‘the little baby I left crying under the green bushes is the beautiful Pastorella who is to marry Sir Calidore!’
Claribel ran to Pastorella’s room, and looked at the little rose, and asked many questions. And when Pastorella had answered her, she was quite satisfied that she was indeed the baby-girl for whom her heart had been so hungry through all those years.
‘My daughter, my daughter, that I mourned as dead!’ she sobbed, as she held Pastorella in her arms and kissed her again and again.
When the knight knew that he was Pastorella’s father, he was as glad as Claribel. So they lived happily together until Calidore had slain the monster and come back to marry Pastorella.
Then instead of Pastorella, the shepherd’s daughter, with her little dainty gown and her wreath of wildflowers, he found a Pastorella in jewels, and silks, and satins, who was the daughter of a great knight and his lady, and grand-daughter of the Lord of Many Islands.
Yet the Pastorella who married brave Sir Calidore was evermore Pastorella, the simplest and sweetest bride that any knight ever brought to the court of the Faerie Queen.
VI
CAMBELL AND TRIAMOND