Or if Providence _will_ send you sisters, go away
yourself, and visit your plainest friend, till you have got a husband."
Gazing wistfully back, as one does gaze at places one fears never to see
again, the Castle of the Nymphs looked like a fantastic water-flower
standing up out of the green river, on its thick stem of rock. Then it
was gone; for our time was not quite our own, and we dared not linger,
lest the boat with our Betters should arrive at the meeting place before
we reached it in the car. But there were compensations, for almost with
every moment the gorge grew grander. Cascades sparkled in the sun like
blowing diamond-dust. The rocks seemed set with jewels, or patterned
with mosaic; and there were caves--caves almost too good to be true. Yet
if we could believe our eyes, they were true, even the dark cavern
where, once upon a time, lived a scaly dragon who terrorized the whole
country for miles around, and had no relish for his meals unless they
were composed of the most exquisite young maidens--though he would
accept a child as an _hors d'oeuvre_. In such a strange world as this,
after all, it was no harder to believe in dragons, than in hiding
countesses, fed and tended for months upon months by faithful servants,
while the red Revolution raged; yet the countess and her cave were
vouched for by history, which ignored the dragon and his.
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