52 THE HIS TOR IE OF
and his Father perswaded him : but see how fortune is plumed with times feathers, and how shee can minister strange causes to breede straunge effects.
It happened not long after this that there was a meeting of all the Farmers Daughters in Sycilia, whither Fawnia was also bidden as the mistres of the feast, who having attired her selfe in her best garments, went among the rest of her companions to the merry meeting : there spending the day in such homely pastimes as shepheards use. As the evening grew on, and their sportes ceased, ech taking their leave at other, Fawnia desiring one of her companions to beare her companie, want home by the flocke, to see if they were well folded, and as they returned, it fortuned that Dorastus (who all that daye had bene hawking, and kilde store of game) incountred by the way these two rnayds, and casting his eye sodenly on Fawnia, he was halfe afraid, fearing that with Acteon he had scene Diana: for hee thought such exquisite perfection could not be founde in any mortall creature. As thus he stoode in a maze, one of his Pages told him, that the maide with the garland on her heade was Fawnia, the faire shepheard, whose jeauty was so much talked of in the Court. Dorastus desirous to see if nature had adorned her minde with any inward qualities, as she had decked her body with outward shape, began to question with her whose daughter she was, of what age and how she had bin trained up, who answered him with such modest reverence and sharpnesse of witte, that Dorastus thought her outward beautie was but a counterfait to darken her inward qualities, wondring how so courtly behaviour could be found in so simple a cottage, and cursing fortune that had shadowed wit and beauty with such hard fortune. As thus he held her a long while with chat, Beauty seeing him at discovert, thought not to lose the vantage, but strooke him so