'The mouth, Winnie? Describe that, and then I need not ask you his name, though perhaps you don't know it yourself.'

'A dark brown moustache covered the mouth. I have always thought that a mouth is unattractive if the lips are so close to the teeth that they seem to stick to them; and yet what a kind woman Mrs. Shales is, and her mouth is of this kind. But, on the other hand, where the space between the teeth and the lips is too great no mouth can be called beautiful, I think. Now though the mouth of the gentleman was not ill-cut, the lips were too far from the teeth, I thought; they were too loose, a little baggy, in short. And when he laughed—'

'What about that, Winnie? I specially want to know about his laugh.'

'Then I will tell you. When he laughed his teeth were a little too much seen; and this gave the mouth a somewhat satirical expression.'

'Winnie,' I said, 'there is no need now for you to tell me the name of the gentleman. In a few sentences you have described him better than I could have done in a hundred.'

'And certainly there is no reason why I should not tell you his name,' she said, laughing, 'for if there is a word that is musical in my ears, it is the name of him whose voice is music—D'Arcy. When he told me that I should know everything in time, and that there was nothing for me to know except that which would give me comfort, and said, "You confide in me!" I could only answer, "Who would not confide in you? I will wait patiently until you tell me what you have to tell." "Then," said he, "the best thing you can do is to lie down for an hour or two on that divan and rest yourself, and go to sleep if you can, while I go and attend to certain affairs that need me." He then left the room. I was glad to be alone, for I was terribly tired. I felt as though I had been taking violent bodily exercise, but without feeling the staying power that Snowdon air can give. I lay down on the divan, and must have fallen asleep immediately. When I woke I found the same kind face near me, and the same kind eyes watching me. Mr. D'Arcy told me that I had been sleeping for two hours, and that it had, he hoped, much refreshed me. He told me also that he took a constitutional walk every day, and asked me if I would accompany him. I said, "Yes, I should like to do so." At this moment there passed the window some railway men leaving some luggage. On seeing them Mr. D'Arcy said, "I see that I must leave you for a minute or two to look after a package of canvases that has just come from my assistant in London," and he left me. When I was left alone I had an opportunity of observing the room. The walls were covered with old faded tapestry, so faded indeed that its general effect was that of a dull grey texture. On looking at it closely I found that it told the story of Samson. Every piece of furniture seemed to me to be a rare curiosity.'

'Now, Winnie,' I said, 'I am not going to interrupt you any more. I want to hear your story as an unbroken narrative.'

IV

'Well,' said Winnie, 'after a while Mr. D'Arcy returned and told me that he was now ready to take me for a stroll across the meadows, saying, "The doctor told me that, at first, your walks must be short; so while you go to your room I will get Mrs. Titwing in for my usual consultation about our frugal meal."

'"My room," I said, "my room, and Mrs. Titwing; who's—"

'"Ha! I quite forgot myself," he said, with an air of vexation, which he tried, I thought, to conceal. "I will ring for Mrs. Titwing—the housekeeper—and she will take you to your room."

'He walked towards the bell, but before reaching it he stopped as if arrested by a sudden thought. Then he said, "I will go to the housekeeper's room and speak to Mrs. Titwing there. I shall be back in a minute." And he passed from the room through the door by which he and I had first entered.

'Scarcely had the door closed behind him before a woman entered by another door opposite to it. She was about the common height, slender, and of an extremely youthful figure for a woman of middle age. Her bright-complexioned face, lit by two watery blue eyes, was pleasant to look upon. It was none the less pleasant because it showed clearly that she was as guileless as a child.

'I knew at once that she was the person—the housekeeper—that Mr. D'Arcy had gone to seek at the other side of the house. Evidently she had come upon me unexpectedly, for she gave a violent start, then she murmured to herself,

'"So it's all over, and all went off well." she said. Then she walked quietly towards me and threw her arms round me and kissed me, saying, "Dear child, I am so glad."

'The tone of voice in which she spoke to me was exactly that of a nurse speaking to a little child.

'I was so taken by surprise that I pulled myself from her embrace with some force. The poor woman looked at me in a hurt way and then said,

'"I beg your pardon, miss. I didn't notice at first how—how changed you are. The look in your eyes makes me feel that you are not the same person, and that I have done quite wrong."

'While she was speaking, Mr. D'Arcy had re-entered the room by the door by which he went out. He had evidently heard the housekeeper's words.

'"Miss Wynne," he said, "this is Mrs. Titwing, my excellent housekeeper. She has been attending you during your illness; but your weakness was so great that you were unconscious of all her kindness."

'I went up to her and kissed her rosy cheek, at which she began to cry a little. I afterwards found that she was in the habit of crying a little on most occasions.

'"Will you, then, kindly show me my room?" I said to her. But as she turned round to lead the way to the room, Mr. D'Arcy said to her,

'"Before you show Miss Wynne the way, I should like one word with you, Mrs. Titwing, in your room, about the arrangements for the day."

'The two passed out of the room, and again I was left to myself and my own thoughts.'

V

'Evidently there was some mystery about me,' said Winifred, continuing her story. 'But the more I tried to think it out the more puzzling it seemed. How had I been conveyed to this strange new place? Who was the wizard whose eyes and whose voice began to enslave me? and what time had passed since he caught me up on Raxton sands? It seemed exactly like one of those Arabian Nights stories which you and I used to read together when we were children. The waking up on the couch, the sight of the end of the other couch behind the screen, and the tall woman's feet upon it, the voices from unseen persons in the room, and above all the strange magic of him who seemed to be the directing genie of the story—all would have seemed to me unreal had it not been for the prosaic figure of Mrs. Titwing. About her there could not possibly be any mystery; she was what Miss Dalrymple would have called "the very embodiment of British commonplace," and when, after a minute or two, she returned with Mr. D'Arcy, I went and kissed her again from sheer delight of feeling the touch of her real, solid; commonplace cheek, and to breathe the commonplace smell of scented soap. Her bearing, however, towards me had become entirely changed since she had gone out of the room. She did not return the kiss, but said, "Shall I show you the way, miss?" and led the way out.

'She took me through the same dark passage by which I had entered, and then I found myself in a large bedroom with low panelled walls, in the middle of which was a vast antique bedstead made of black carved oak, and every bit of furniture in the room seemed as old as the bedstead. Over the mantelpiece was an old picture in a carved oak frame, a Madonna and Child, the beauty of which fascinated me. I remember that on the bottom of the frame was written in printed letters the name "Chiaro dell' Erma." I was surprised to find in the room another walking-dress, not new, but slightly worn, laid out ready for me to put on. I lifted it up and looked at it. I saw at a glance that it would most likely fit me like a glove.

'"Whose dress is this?" I said.

'"It's yours, miss."

'"Mine? But how came it mine?"

'"Oh, please don't ask me any questions, miss," she said. "Please ask Mr. D'Arcy, miss; he knows all about it. I am only the housekeeper, miss."

'"Mr. D'Arcy knows all about my dress!" I said. "Why, what on earth has Mr. D'Arcy to do with my dress?"

'"Please don't ask me any more questions, miss," she said. "Pray don't. Mr. D'Arcy is a very kind man; I am sure nobody has ever heard me say but what he is a very kind man; but if you do what he says you are not to do, if you talk about what he says you are not to talk about, he is frightful, he is awful. He calls you a chattering old—I don't know what he won't call you. And, of course, I know you are a lady, miss. Of course you look a lady, miss, when you are dressed like one. But then, you see, when I first saw you, you were not dressed as you are now, and at first sight, of course, we go by the dress a good deal, you know. But Mr. D'Arcy needn't be afraid I shall not treat you like a lady, miss. I'm only a housekeeper now, though, of course, I was once very different—very different indeed. But, of course, anybody has only to look at you to see you are a lady, and, besides, Mr. D'Arcy says you are a lady, and that is quite enough."

'At this moment there came through the door—it was ajar—Mr. D'Arcy's voice from the distance, so loud and clear that every word could be heard.

'"Mrs. Titwing, why do you stay chattering there, preventing Miss Wynne from getting ready? You know we are going out for a walk together."

'"Oh Lord, miss!" said the poor woman in a frightened tone, "I must go. Tell him I didn't chatter—tell him you asked me questions and I was obliged to answer them."

'The mysteries around me were thickening every moment. What did this prattling woman mean about the dress in which she had at first seen me? Was the dress in which she had first seen me so squalid that it had affected her simple imagination? What had become of me after I had sunk down on Raxton sands, and why was I left neglected by every one? I knew you were ill after the landslip, but Mr. D'Arcy had just told me that you had since been well enough to go to Wales and afterwards to Japan.

'I put on the dress and soon followed her. When I reached the tapestried room there was Mr. D'Arcy talking to her in a voice so gentle, tender, and caressing, that it seemed impossible the rough voice I had heard bellowing through the passage could have come from the same mouth, and Mrs. Titwing was looking into his face with the delighted smile of a child who was being forgiven by its father for some trifling offence. As I stood and looked at them I said to myself, "Truly I am in a land of wonders."'

VI

'Mr. D'Arcy and I,' said Winifred, 'went out of the house at the back, walked across a roughly paved stable-yard, and passed through a gate and entered a meadow. Then we walked along a stream about as wide as one of our Welsh brooks, but I found it to be a backwater connected with a river. For some time neither of us spoke a word. He seemed lost in thought, and my mind was busy with what I intended to say to him, for I was fully determined to get some light thrown upon the mystery.

'When we reached the river bank we turned towards the left, and walked until we reached a weir, and there we sat down upon a fallen willow tree, the inside of which was all touchwood. Then he said,

'"You are silent, Miss Wynne."

'"And you are silent," I said.

'"My silence is easily explained," he said. "I was waiting to hear some remark fall from you as to these meadows and the river, which you have seen so often."

'"Which I see now for the first time, you mean."

'"Miss Wynne," he said, looking earnestly in my face, "you and I have taken this walk together nearly every day for months."

'"That," I said, "is—is quite impossible."

'"It is true," he said. And then again we sat silent.

'Then I said to him with great firmness, "Mr. D'Arcy, I'm only a peasant girl, but I'm Welsh; I have faith in you, faith in your goodness and faith in your kindness to me; but I must insist upon knowing how I came here, and how you and I were brought together."

'He smiled, and said, "I was right in thinking that your face expresses a good deal of what we call character. I should have preferred waiting for a day or two before relating all I have to tell," he said, "in answer to what you ask, but as you insist upon having it now," with a playful kind of smile, "it would be ill-bred for me to insist that you must wait. But before I begin, would it not be better if you were to tell me something of what occurred to yourself when you were taken ill at Raxton?"

'"Then will your story begin where mine breaks off?" I said.

'"We shall see that," he said, "as soon as you have ended yours."

'"Do you know Raxton?" I said.

'At first he seemed to hesitate about his reply, and then said,

'"No, I do not."

'I then told him in as few words as I could our adventures on the sands on the night of the landslip, and my search for my father's body afterwards, until I suddenly sank down in a fit. When I had finished Mr. D'Arcy was silent, and was evidently lost in thought. At last he said,

'"My story, I perceive, cannot begin where yours breaks off. I first became acquainted with you in the studio of a famous painter named Wilderspin, one of the noblest-minded and most admirable men now breathing, but a great eccentric."

'"Why, Mr. D'Arcy, I never was in a studio in my life until to-day," I said.

'"You mean, Miss Wynne, that you were not consciously there," he said. "But in that studio you certainly were, and the artist, who reverenced you as a being from another world, was painting your face in a beautiful picture. While he was doing this you were taken seriously ill, and your life was despaired of. It was then that I brought you into the country, and here you have been living and benefiting by the kind services of Mrs. Titwing for a long time."

'"And you know nothing of my history previously to seeing me in the London studio?" I asked.

'"All that I could ever learn about that," said he, in what seemed to me a rather evasive tone, "I had to gather from the incoherent and rambling talk of Wilderspin, a religious enthusiast whose genius is very nearly akin to mania. He was so struck by you that he actually believed you to be not a corporeal woman at all; he believed you had been sent from the spirit-world by his dead mother to enable him to paint a great picture."

'"Oh, I must see him, and make him tell me all," I said.

'"Yes," said he, "but not yet."

'What Mr. D'Arcy told me,' said Winnie, 'affected me so deeply that I remained silent for a long time. Then came a thought which made me say,

'"You. too, are a painter, Mr. D'Arcy?"

'"Yes," he said.

'"During the months that I have been living here have you used me as your model?"

'"No; but that was not because I did not wish to do so."

'Then he suddenly looked in my face and said,

'"Is your family entirely Welsh, Miss Wynne?"

'"Entirely," I said. "But why did you not use me as your model, Mr. D'Arcy?"

'"Poor Wilderspin believed you to be a spiritual body," he said; "I did not. I knew that you were a young lady in an unconscious condition. To have painted you in such a condition and without the possibility of getting your consent would have been sacrilege, even if I had painted you as a Madonna."

'I could not speak, his words and tone were so tender. He broke the silence by saying,

'"Miss Wynne, there is one thing in connection with you that puzzles me very much. You speak of yourself as though you were a kind of Welsh peasant girl, and yet your conversation—well, I mustn't tell you what I think of that."

'This made me laugh outright, for ladies who called on Miss Dalrymple used to make the same remark.

'"Mr. D'Arcy," I said, "you are harbouring the greatest little impostor in the British Islands. I am the mere mocking-bird of one of the most cultivated women living. My true note is that of a simple Welsh bird."

'"A Welsh warbler," he said, with a smile, "but who was the original of the impostor?"

'"Miss Dalrymple," I said.

'"Miss Dalrymple, the writer!—why I knew her years ago—before you were born."

'Our talk had been so lively that we had not noticed the passage of time, nor had we noticed that the clouds had been gathering for a summer shower. Suddenly the rain fell heavily; although we ran to the house, we were quite wet by the time we got in.

'We found poor Mrs. Titwing in a great state of excitement on account of the rain, and also because the dinner had been waiting for nearly an hour. That scamper in the rain, and the laughing and joking at our predicament, seemed to bring us closer together than anything else could have done. Mr. D'Arcy told Mrs. Titwing to take me to my room to change my dress for dinner, and he seemed quite disappointed when I told him that I could eat no dinner, and would like to retire to my room for the night. The fact was that the events of that wonderful day had exhausted all my powers; every nerve within me seemed crying out for sleep.

'I went to my room, dismissed Mrs. Titwing, and went to bed at once. But no sooner had I got into bed than I began to perceive that, instead of sleep, a long wakeful night was before me. Mr. D'Arcy's story about finding me in a London studio took entire possession of my mind. How did I get there? Where had I been and what had been my adventures before I got there? Why did the painter, in whose studio Mr. D'Arcy found me, believe that I had been super-naturally sent to him? I shuddered as a thousand dreadful thoughts flowed into my mind. "Mr. D'Arcy," I said to myself, "must know more than he has told me." Then, of course, came thoughts about you. I wondered why you had allowed me to drift away from you in this manner. True, I was probably removed from Raxton immediately after my illness, when you were very ill, as I knew; but then you had recovered!'

VII

When Winifred reached this point in her story, I said,

'And so you wondered what had become of me from your last seeing me down to your waking up in Mr. D'Arcy's house?'

'Yes, yes, Henry. Do tell me what you were doing all that time.'

As she said these words the whole tragedy of my life returned to me in one moment, and yet in that moment I lived over again every dreadful incident and every dreadful detail. The spectacle on the sands, the search for her in North Wales, the meeting in the cottage, the frightful sight as she leapt away from me on Snowdon, the heart-breaking search for her among the mountains, the sound of her voice, singing by the theatre portico in the rain, the search for her in the hideous London streets, the scenes in the studios, the soul-blasting drama in Primrose Court—all came upon me in such a succession of realities that the beautiful radiant creature now talking to me seemed impossible except as a figure in a dream. And she was asking me to tell her what I had been doing during all these months of nightmare. But I knew that I never could tell her, either now or at any future time. I knew that to tell her would be to kill her.

'Winnie,' I said, 'I will tell you all about myself, but I must hear your story first. The faster you get on with that the sooner you will hear what I have to tell.'

'Then I will get on fast,' said she. 'After a while my thoughts, as I tossed in my bed, turned from the past to the future. What was the future that was lying before me? For months I had evidently been living on the charity of Mr. D'Arcy. My only excuse for having done so was that I was entirely unconscious of it; but now that I did know the relations between us I must of course end them at once. But what was I to do? Whither was I to go? Besides Miss Dalrymple, whose address I did not know, I had no friends except Sinfi Lovell and the Gypsies and a few Welsh farmers. To live upon my benefactor's generous charity now that I was conscious of it was, I felt, impossible.

'I was penniless. I had not even money to pay my railway fare to any part of England. There was only one thing for me to do—write to you. When I rose in the morning it was with the full determination to write to you at once. I had been told by Mrs. Titwing that Mr. D'Arcy always breakfasted alone in a little anteroom adjoining his bedroom, and always breakfasted late. My breakfast, she said, would be prepared in what she called the little green room. And when I left my bedroom, dressed in a morning dress that was carefully laid out for me, I found the housekeeper moving about in the passages. She conducted me to the little green room. On the walls were two looking-glasses in old black oak frames carved with knights at tilt and angels' heads hovering above them. Each frame contained two circular mirrors surrounded by painted designs telling the story of the Holy Grail. The room was furnished with quaint sofas and chairs on which beautiful little old-fashioned designs were painted. She told me that as I had not named an hour for breakfasting I should have to wait about twenty minutes.

'In one corner of the room was a rather large whatnot, on which lay one or two French novels in green and yellow paper covers and a few daily and weekly newspapers, which I went and turned over. Among them I was startled to find a paper called the Raxton Gazette. But I saw at once how it got there, for written on the margin at the top of the paper was the address, "Dr. Mivart, Wimpole Street, London." Mr. D'Arcy had told me that the gentleman whose voice I heard behind the screen was the medical man who attended to me during my illness, and it now suddenly flashed upon my mind that at Raxton there was a Dr. Mivart, though I had never seen him during my stay there. These were, no doubt, one and the same person, and some one from Raxton had posted the newspaper to the doctor's house in London.

'I looked down the columns of the paper with a very lively interest, and my eye was soon caught by a paragraph encircled by a thick blue pencil mark. It gave from a paper called the London Satirist what professed to be a long account of you, in which it was said that you were living in a bungalow in Wales with a Gypsy girl.'

When Winifred said this I forgot my promise not to interrupt her narrative, and exclaimed,

'And you believed this infamous libel, Winnie?'

'To say that I believed it as a simple statement of fact would of course be wrong. I never doubted you loved me as a child.'

'As a child! Do you then think that I did not love you that night on Raxton sands?'

'I did not doubt that you loved me then. But wealth, I had been told, is so demoralising, and I thought your never coming forward to find me and protect me in my illness might have something to do with inconstancy. Anyhow, these thoughts combined with my dread of your mother to prevent me from writing to you.'

'Winnie, Winnie!' I said, 'these theories of the so-called advanced thinkers, whom your aunt taught you to believe in—these ideas that love and wealth cannot exist together, are prejudices as narrow and as blind as those of an opposite kind which have sapped the natures of certain members of my own family.'

'The sight of your dear sad face when I first saw it here was proof enough of that,' she said. 'As your life was said to be that of a wanderer, I did not care to write to Raxton, and I did not know where to address you. What I had read in the newspaper, I need not tell you, troubled me greatly. I cried bitterly, and made but a poor breakfast. After it was over Mr. D'Arcy entered the room, and shook me warmly by the hand. He saw that I had been crying, and he stood silent and seemed to be asking himself the cause. Drawing a chair towards me, and taking a seat, he said,

'"I fear you have not slept well, Miss Wynne."

'"Not very well," I answered. Then, looking at him, I said, "Mr. D'Arcy, I have something to say to you, and this is the moment for saying it."

'He gave a startled look, as though he guessed what I was going to say.

'"And I have something to say to you, Miss Wynne," he said, smiling, "and this seems the proper time for saying it. Up to the last few weeks a young gentleman from Oxford has been acting as my secretary. He has now left me, and I am seeking another. His duties, I must say, have not been what would generally be called severe. I write most of my own letters, though not all, and my correspondence is far from being large. His chief duty has been that of reading to me in the evening. For many years my eyes have not been so strong as a painter's ought to be, and the oculist whom I consulted told me that the strain of the painter's work was quite as much as my eyes ought to bear, and that I could not afford much eyesight for reading purposes. I am passionately fond of reading. To be without the pleasure that books can afford me would be to make me miserable, and I have looked upon my secretary's duty of reading aloud to me as an important one. If you would take his place you would be conferring the greatest service upon me."

'"Mr. D'Arcy," I said, "I suspect you."

'"Suspect me, Miss Wynne?"

'"I suspect that generous heart of yours. I suspect you are merely inventing a post for me to fill, because you pity me."

'"No, Miss Wynne; upon my honour this is not so. I will not deny that if it were not in your power to do me the service that I ask of you, I should still feel the greatest disappointment if you passed from under this roof. Your scruples about living here as you lived during your illness—simply as my guest—I understand, but do not approve. They show that you are not quite so free from the bondage of custom as I should like every friend of mine to be. The tie of friendship is, in my judgment, the strongest of all ties, stronger than that of blood, because it springs from the natural kinship of soul to soul, and there is no reason in the world why I should not offer you a home as a friend, or why, if the circumstances of our lives were reversed, you should not offer me one. But in this case it is the fact that the service I am asking you to render me is greater than any service I can render you."

'I was so deeply touched by his words and by his way of speaking them, that my lips trembled, and I could make no reply.

'"It is a shame," he said, "for me to talk about business so soon after your recovery. Let us leave the matter for the moment, and come to me in the studio during the morning, and let me show you the pictures I am painting, and some of my choice things."

'The morning wore on, and still I sat pondering over the situation in which I found myself. The servant came and removed the breakfast things, and her furtive glances at me showed that I was an object at once familiar and strange to her. But very little attention did I pay to her, in such a whirl of thoughts as I then was. The moment that one course of action seemed to me the best, the very opposite would occur to me as being the best. However, I was determined to know from Mr. D'Arcy, and at once, what was the state in which I was when I was brought to this place, and what had been the course of my life during my stay here. Mr. D'Arcy had told me that, for reasons which he so touchingly alluded to, he had not used me as a model. How, then, had my time been passed? To question poor Mrs. Titwing would only be to frighten her. I would ask Mr. D'Arcy for a full confession.

'Mrs. Titwing came into the room. She began pulling at the ribbon of her black silk apron as though she wanted to speak and could not find the proper words. At last she said,

'"I hope, miss, there have been no words between you and Mr. D'Arcy?"

''"Words between me and Mr. D'Arcy? What do you mean?" I asked.

'"He seems very much upset, miss, about something. He is not at his easel, but keeps walking about the studio, and every now and then he asks where you are. I'm sure he used to dote on you when you were a child, miss."

'"When I was a child?" I said, laughing. "But I see what it is. I have been very neglectful. I promised to go into the studio to see the pictures, and he is, of course, impatient at my keeping him waiting. I will go to him at once," and I went.

'When I entered the studio he turned quickly round and said,

'"Well?"

'"You were so kind," I said, "as to invite me to see your treasures."

'"To be sure," he said. "I thought you came to give your decision."

'He then showed me the curious divan upon which I had rested the day before, and explained to me the meaning of the carved designs.'

VIII

Winifred described the designs on the divan so vividly that I could almost see them. But what interested me was the painter, not his surroundings; and she now seemed to grow weary of talking about herself.

'Did he,' I said, 'did he say anything about—about painters' models?'

'Yes,' she said, 'Mr. D'Arcy took me to an easel and showed me a picture. It was only the half-length of a woman; but it was a tragedy rendered fully by the expression on one woman's face.

'"I had no idea," I said, "that any picture of a single face could do such work as that. Was this painted from a model?"

'"Yes," he said, with a smile, which was evidently at my ignorance of art. "It was painted from life."

'There were four other half-lengths in the room, all of them very beautiful.

'"Two of these," he said, "are copies; the originals have been sold. The other two need still a few touches to make them complete."

'"And they were all painted from life?" I said.

'"Yes," he said. "Why do you repeat that question?"

'"Because," I said, "although they are all so wonderful and so beautiful in colour, I can see a great difference between them—I can scarcely say what the difference is. They are evidently all painted by the same artist, but painted in different moods of the artist's mind."

'"Ah," he said, "I am much interested. Let me see you classify them according to your view. There are, as you see, two brunettes and two blondes."

'"Yes," I said, "between this grand brunette, to use your own expression, holding a pomegranate in her hand and the other brunette whose beautiful eyes are glistening and laughing over the fruit she is holding up, there is the same difference that there is between the blonde's face under the apple blossoms and the other blonde's face of the figure that is listening to music. In both faces the difference seems to be that of the soul."

'"The two faces," said he, "in which you see what you call soul are painted from two dear friends of mine—ladies of high intelligence and great accomplishments, who occasionally honour me by giving me sittings—the other two are painted from two of the finest hired models to be found in London."

'"Then," I said, "an artist's success depends a great deal upon his model? I had no idea of such a thing."

'"It does indeed," he said. "Such success as I have won since my great loss is very largely owing to those two ladies, one so grand and the other so sweet, whom you are admiring."

'The way in which he spoke the words "since my great loss" almost brought tears into my eyes. He then went round the room, and explained in a delightful way the various pictures and objects of interest. I felt that I was preventing him from working, and told him so.

'"You are very thoughtful," he said, "but I can only paint when I feel the impulse within me, and to-day I am lazy. But while you go and get your luncheon—I do not lunch myself—I must try to do something. You must have many matters of your own that you would like to attend to. Will you return to the studio about five o'clock, and let me have your company in another walk?"

'Until five o'clock I was quite alone, and wandered about the house and garden trying my memory as to whether I could recall something, but in vain. At any other time than this I should no doubt have found the old house a very fascinating one; but not for two minutes together could my mind dwell upon anything but the amazing situation in which I found myself. The house was, I saw, built of grey stone, and as it had seven gables it suggested to me Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous story, of which my aunt was so fond. Inside I found every room to be more or less interesting. But what attracted me most, I think, was a series of large attics in which was a number of enormous oak beams supporting the antique roof. With the sunlight pouring through the windows and illuminating almost every corner, the place seemed cheerful enough, but I could not help thinking how ghostly it must look on a moonlight night.

'While the thought was in my mind, a strangle sensation came upon me. I seemed to hear a moan; it came through the door of the large attic adjoining the one in which I stood, and then I heard a voice that seemed familiar to me, and yet I could not recall it. It was repeating in a loud, agonised tone the words of that curse written on the parchment scroll which I picked up on Raxton sands. I was so astonished that for a long time I could think of nothing else.

IX

'At five o'clock I was going towards the studio to keep my appointment when I met Mr. D'Arcy in his broad-brimmed felt hat, ready and waiting for me to take the proposed walk with him.

'Oh, what a lovely afternoon it was! A Welsh afternoon could not have been lovelier. In fact, it carried my mind back here. The sun, shining on the buttercups and the grey-tufted standing grass, made the meadows look as though covered with a tapestry that shifted from grey to lavender, and then from lavender to gold, as the soft breeze moved over it. And many of the birds were still in full song; and brilliant as was the music of the skylarks, the blackbirds and thrushes were so numerous that the music falling from the sky seemed caught and swallowed up by the music rising from the hedgerows and trees.

'I lingered at one of the gates through which we passed to enjoy the beauty undisturbed by the motion of my own body.

'"I have often wished," Mr. D'Arcy said, "that I had a tithe of your passion for Nature, and all your knowledge of Nature. To have been born in London and to have passed one's youth there is a great loss. Nature has to be learnt, as art has to be learnt, in earliest youth."

'"What makes you know that my chief passion is love of Nature?" I asked.

'"It was," he said, "the one thing you showed during your illness—during your unconscious condition."

'"And yet I remember nothing of that time," I said. "This gives me an opportunity of asking you something—an opportunity which I had determined to make for myself before another day went by."

'"And what is that?" he said, in a tone that betrayed some uneasiness.

'"You have told me how I came here. I now want you to tell me, too, what was my condition when I came and what was my course of life during all this long period. How did the time pass? What did I do? I remember nothing."

'"I am glad you are asking me these questions," he said, "for I believe that the more fully and more exactly I answer them, the better for you and the better for me. Victor Hugo, in one of his romances, speaks of the pensive somnambulism of the animals. 'Somnambulism,' sometimes pensive and sometimes playful, is the very phrase I should use in characterising your condition when you first came here and down to your recovery from that strange illness. But this somnambulism would every now and then change and pass into a consciousness which I can only compare with that of a child. But no child that I have ever seen was so bewitchingly child-like as you were. It was this that made your presence such a priceless boon to me."

'"Priceless boon, Mr. D'Arcy!" I said. "How could such a being as you describe be a priceless boon to any one?"

'"I will tell you," he replied. "Even before that great sorrow which has made me the loneliest man upon the earth—even in the days when my animal spirits were considered at times almost boisterous, I was always at intervals subject to periods of great depression, or rather, I should say, to periods of ennui. I must either be painting or reading or writing. I had not the precious faculty of being able on occasions to sit and let the rich waters of life flow over me. I would yearn for amusement, and search in vain for some object to amuse me. When you first came I was deeply interested in so extraordinary a case as yours; and after a while, when the acuteness of my curiosity and the poignancy of my sympathy for you had abated, you became to me a joy, as a child is a joy in the eyes of its parents."

'"Then your interest in me," I said, with a smile, "was that which you would feel towards a puppy or a kitten."

'"I perceive that you have a turn for satire," he said, laughing. "I will not deny that I have an extraordinarily strong passion for watching the movements of animals. I have, to the sorrow of my neighbours, filled my garden in London with all kinds of purchases from Jamrach's. But from the moment that I knew you, who combined the fascination of a fawn and a child with that of a sylph or a fairy, my poor little menagerie was neglected, and what became of its members I scarcely know. I suppose I am very uncomplimentary to you, but you would have the truth. The moment that I felt myself threatened by the fiend Ennui I used to tell Mrs. Titwing, who was in the habit of calling you her baby, to bring you into the studio, and at once the fiend fled. At last I grew so attached to you that your presence was a positive necessity of my life. Unless I knew that you were in the studio I could not paint. It was necessary for me at intervals to look across the room at that divan and see you there amusing yourself—playing with yourself, so to speak, sometimes like a kitten, sometimes like a child. I would not have parted with you for the world."

'He did not say he would not now part with me for the world, Henry, and I thought I understood the meaning of that expression of disappointment which I had observed in his eyes when I first saw them looking into mine. I thought I understood this extraordinary man—so unlike all others; I thought I knew why my eyes lost the charm he was now so eloquently describing to me the moment that they became lighted with what he called self-consciousness.

'After a while I said, "But as I was in such an unconscious state as you describe, how could you possibly know that a speciality of mine is a love of Nature?"

'"It was only when you were out in the open air that the condition which I have compared to somnambulism seemed at times to disappear. Then your consciousness seemed to spring up for a moment and to take heed of what was passing around you. You would sometimes scamper through the meadows, pluck the wild-flowers and weave them into wreaths round your head, or stand listening to the birds, or hold out your hands as if to embrace the sunny wind. One day when a friend of mine, an enthusiastic angler, who comes here, was going down to the river to fish, you showed the greatest interest in what was going on. The fishing tackle seemed so familiar to you that my friend put a fishing rod into your hand and you went with him to the river. I do not myself care for angling, and I was at the time very busy with a picture, but I could not resist the temptation to follow you. You skipped into the punt with the greatest glee, baited your hook, adjusted your float on the line, cast it into the water and fished with such skill that you caught two fish to my friend's one. Observing all these things, I came to the conclusion that you had lived much in the open air, and other incidents made me know that you were a great lover of Nature."

'"And you," I said, "must also be a lover of Nature, or you could not find such delight in watching animals."

'"No," he said, "the interest I take in animals has nothing whatever to do with love of Nature or study of Nature. They interest me by that unconsciousness of grace which makes them such a contrast to man."

'We then went into the house. Our talk during our ramble in the fields seemed to remove effectually all awkwardness and restraint between us.

X

'That day,' said Winnie, 'a determination which had been caused by many a reflection during the last few hours induced me at dinner to lead the conversation to the subject of pictures and models. In a few minutes Mr. D'Arcy launched out in an eloquent discourse upon a subject which was so new to me and so familiar to him.

'"You were saying this morning, Mr. D'Arcy," I urged me to tell her what had befallen myself since we had parted at the cottage door at Raxton. Even had it been possible for me to talk about myself without touching upon some dangerous incident or another, my impatience to get at the mystery of mysteries in connection with her and her rescue from Primrose Court was so great that I could only implore her to tell me what had occurred down to her leaving Hurstcote Manor, and also what had been the cause of her leaving.

'Well,' said Winnie, 'I am now going to tell you of an extraordinary thing that happened. One fine night the moon was so brilliant that after I quitted Mr. D'Arcy I stole out of the side door into the garden, a favourite place of mine, for old English flowers were mixed with apple trees and pear trees. I was strolling about the garden, thinking over a thousand things connected with you, and myself, and Mr. D'Arcy, when I saw stooping over a flower-bed the figure of a tall woman. I could scarcely believe my eyes, for I had all the while supposed that, excepting Mr. D'Arcy, myself, and Mrs. Titwing, the servants were the only occupants of the place. I turned away, and walked silently through the little wicket into what is called the home close. As I pondered over the incident, I recalled certain things which singly had produced no effect on my mind, but which now fitted in with each other, and seemed to open up vistas of mystery and suspicion. Mysterious looks and gestures on the faces of the servants pointed to there being some secret that was to be kept from me. I had not given much heed to these things, but now I could not help connecting them with the appearance of the tall woman in the garden.

'Some guests arrived next day, and when I pleaded headache Mr. D'Arcy said, "Perhaps you would rather keep to your own room to-day."

'I told him I should, and I spent the day alone—spent it mainly in thinking about the tall woman. In the evening I went into the garden, and remained there for a long time, but no tall woman made her appearance.

'I passed out through the wicket into the home close, and as I walked about in the grass, under the elms that sprang up from the tall hedge, I thought and thought over what I had seen, but could come to no explanation. I was standing under a tree, in the shadow which its branches made, when I became suddenly conscious that the tall woman was close to me. I turned round, and stood face to face with Sinfi Lovell. The sight of a spectre could not have startled me more, but the effect of my appearance upon her was greater still. Her face took an expression that seemed to curdle my blood, and she shrieked, "Father! the curse! Let his children be vagabonds and beg their bread; let them seek it also out of desolate places." And then she ran towards the house.

'In a few minutes Mr. D'Arcy came out into the field without his hat, and evidently much agitated.

'"Miss Wynne," he said, "I fear you must have been half frightened to death. Never was there such an unlucky contretemps."

'"But why is Sinfi Lovell here?" I said, "and why was I not told she was here?"

'"Sinfi is an old friend of mine," he said. "I have been in the habit of using her as a model for pictures. She came here to sit to me, when she was taken ill. She is subject to fits, as you have seen. The doctor believed that they were over and would not recur, and I had determined that to-morrow I would bring you together."

'I made no reply, but walked silently by his side across the field to the little wicket. The confidence I had reposed in Mr. D'Arcy had been like the confidence a child reposes in its father.

'"Miss Wynne," he said, in a voice full of emotion, "I feel that an unlucky incident has come between us, and yet if I ever did anything for your good, it was when I decided to postpone revealing the fact that Sinfi Lovell was under this roof until her cure was so complete and decisive that you could never by any chance receive the shock that you have now received."

'I felt that my resentment was melting in the music of his words.

'"What caused the fits?" I said. "She talked about being under a curse. What can it mean?"

'"That," he said, "is too long a story for me to tell you now."

'"I know," said I, "that some time ago the tomb of Mr. Aylwin's father was violated by some undiscovered miscreant, and I know that the words Sinfi uttered just now are the words of a curse written by the dead man on a piece of parchment, and stolen with a jewel from his tomb. I have seen the parchment itself, and I know the words well. Her father, Panuel Lovell, is as innocent of the crime of sacrilege as my poor father was. What could have made her suppose that she had inherited the curse from her father?"

'"I have no explanation to offer," he said. "As you know so much of the matter and I know so little, I am inclined to ask you for some explanation of the puzzle."

'I thought over the matter for a minute, and then I said to him, "Sinfi Lovell knows Raxton as well as Snowdon, and must have been very familiar with the crime. I can only suppose that she has brooded so long over the enormity of the offence and the appalling words of the curse that she has actually come at last to believe that poor, simple-minded Panuel Lovell is the offender, and that she, as his child, has inherited the curse."

'"A most admirable solution of the mystery," he said, his face beaming with delight.'

XII

When Winnie got to this point she said, 'Yes, Henry, poor Sinfi seems in some unaccountable way to have learnt all about that piece of parchment and the curse written upon it. She has been under the extraordinary delusion that her own father, poor Panuel Lovell, was the violator of the tomb, and that she has inherited the curse.'

'Good God, Winnie!' I exclaimed; and when I recalled what I had seen of Sinfi in the cottage, I was racked with perplexity, pity, and wonder. What could it mean?

'Yes,' said Winifred, 'she has been possessed by this astounding delusion, and it used to bring on fits which were appalling to witness. They are passed now, however.'

'Is she recovered now?'

'Mr. D'Arcy,' said Winnie, 'assured me that, in the opinion of the doctor, the delusion would not he permanent, but that Sinfi would soon be entirely restored to health. While Mr. D'Arcy and I were talking about her Sinfi came through the wicket again. Rushing up to me and seizing my hand, she said,

'"Oh, Winnie, how I must have skeared you! I dare say Mr. D'Arcy has told you that I've been subject to fits o' late. It was comin' on you suddint as I did under the tree that brought it on. I wouldn't let Mr. D'Arcy tell you I wur here until I wur quite sure I should have no more on 'em, but the doctor said this very day that I wur now quite well."

'My mind ran all night long upon the mystery of Sinfi Lovell. Mr. D'Arcy's explanation of her appearance at Hurstcote Manor was certainly clear enough, but somehow its very clearness aroused suspicion—no, I will not say suspicion—misgivings. If he had been able, while he seemed so frank and open, to keep away from me a secret—I mean the secret of Sinfi Lovell's being concealed in the house—what secrets might he not be concealing from me about my own mystery? Did he not know everything that occurred during that period which was a blank in my mind, the period from my sinking down on the sands to my waking up in his house?

'From the very first, indeed, a feeling of mystery had haunted me. I had often pondered over every circumstance that attended my waking into life, but that incident which was the most firmly fixed in my mind was the sight of the feet of a tall woman whose body was hid by the screen between my couch and the other one. When I asked Mr. D'Arcy about this, he did not say in so many words that I was suffering from a delusion about those feet, but he talked about the illusion which generally accompanied a recovery from such illnesses as mine. Now of course I felt sure that Sinfi was the person I had seen on the couch. But why was she there?

'I did not see Mr. D'Arcy until the afternoon after the guests had left, for in order to avoid seeing him and them, I took a long stroll by the river and then got into the punt. I had scarcely done so when Sinfi appeared on the bank and hailed me. I took her into the punt. She was so entirely herself that I found it difficult to believe in the startling spectacle of the previous evening, although her expression was careworn, and she certainly looked a little paler than she used to look when she and I and Rhona Boswell were such great friends; her splendid beauty and bearing were as striking as ever, I thought. I was expecting every minute that she would say something about what occurred under the elm tree in the home close. But she did not allude to it, and therefore I did not. We spent the entire afternoon in reminiscences of Carnarvonshire. When she told me that she knew you and that you had been there together, and when she told me the cause of your being there, and told me of your search for me, and all the distress that came to you on my account, my longing to see you was like a fever.

'But vivid as were the pictures that Sinfi gave me of your search for me, I could not piece them together in a plain tale. I tried to do so; it was impossible. What had happened to me after I had become unconscious on the sands in that unaccountable way—why I was found in Wales—how I could possibly have got there without knowing about it—what had led to my being discovered by Mr. D'Arcy—discovered in London, above all places, and in a painter's studio—these questions were with me night and day, and Sinfi was entirely unable to tell me anything about the matter, unless, as I sometimes half-thought, she was concealing something from me.'

'How could you have suspicions of poor Sinfi?' I said, for I was becoming alarmed at the way in which these inquiries were absorbing Winnie's mind.

'It is, I know, Henry, a peculiarity of my nature to be extremely confiding until I have once been deceived, and then to be just as suspicious. Kind as Mr. D'Arcy has been to me, I began to feel restless in his haven of refuge. I think that he perceived it, for I often found his eyes fixed upon me with a somewhat inquiring and anxious expression in them. I felt that I must leave him and go out into the world and take my place in the battle of life.'

'But, Winnie,' I said, 'you don't say that you intended to come to me. Battle of life, indeed! Where should Winnie stand in that battle except by the side of Henry? You knew now where to find me. Sinfi, of course, told you that I was in Wales. And you did not even write to me! What can it mean?'

'Why, Henry, don't you know what it means? Don't you know that the newspapers were full of long paragraphs about the heir of the Aylwins having left his famous bungalow and gone to Japan? Why, it was actually copied into the little penny weekly thing that Mrs. Titwing takes in, and it was there that I read it.'

'This shows the folly of ignoring the papers,' I said. 'I did undoubtedly say in some letters to friends that I proposed going to Japan; but my loss of you, my grief, my misery, paralysed every faculty of mine. My strength of purpose was all gone. I delayed and delayed starting, and never left Wales at all, as you see.'

'Two things,' continued Winnie, 'prevented my leaving Hurstcote—my promise to Mr. D'Arcy to sit to him for his picture of Zenelophon, and the prosaic fact that I had not money in my pocket to travel with; for it was part of the delicate method of Mr. D'Arcy to furnish me with everything money could buy, but to give me no money. His extravagant expenditure upon me in the way of dress, trinkets, and every kind of luxury that could be placed in my room by Mrs. Titwing appalled me. Mrs. Titwing's own bearing, when I spoke to her about them, would have made one almost suppose that they grew there like mushrooms; and if I mentioned them to Mr. D'Arcy he would tell me that Mrs. Titwing was answerable for all that; he knew nothing about such matters.

'What I should in the end have done as to leaving Hurstcote or remaining there I don't know; but after a while something occurred to remove my difficulties. One morning, when I was giving Mr. D'Arcy a long sitting for his picture, a Gypsy friend of Sinfi's, belonging to a family of Lees encamped two or three miles off, called to see her. It was a man, Sinfi told me, whom I did not know, and he had gone away without my seeing him.

'In the afternoon, when Sinfi and I were in the punt fishing together, I could not help noticing that she was much absorbed in thought.

'"This 'ere fishin' brings back old Wales, don't it?" she said.

'"Yes," I said, "and I should love to see the old places again."

'"You would?" she said; and her excitement was so great that she dropped her fishing-rod in the river. "Jake Lee has been tellin' me that our people are there, all camped in the old place by Bettws y Coed. I told him to write to my daddy—Jake can write—and tell him that I'm goin' to see him."

'"But you already knew they were there, Sinfi; you told me. What makes you so suddenly want to go?"

'"That's nuther here nor there. I do want to go. Why can't you go with me?"

'"I should much like it," I said, "but it's impossible."

'"Why? You can come back to Mr. D'Arcy again."

'"But, Sinfi," I said, "how are we to travel without money? I have not a copper."

'"Ah, but I've got gold balansers about me, and they're better nor copper."

'"Dear Sinfi!" I said, "I'd rather borrow of you than any one in the world."

'"Borrow!" said she,—"all right! Now we shall have to speak to Mr. D'Arcy about it. It'll be like drawin' one o' his teeth partin' with you."

'When I next saw Mr. D'Arcy I found that Sinfi had already spoken to him about our project. He seemed very reluctant for me to leave him, although I promised him that I would return.

'"It is a strange fancy of Sinfi's, Miss Wynne," said he, "and a very disconcerting one to me; but I feel that it must be yielded to. Whatever can be done to serve or even gratify Sinfi Lovell, it is my duty and yours to do."

'Mr. D'Arcy always spoke of Sinfi in this way. She seems to have done something of a peculiarly noble kind for him and for me too, but what it is I have tried in vain to discover.

'And a few days after this we started for Wales.

'Oh, Henry, I wonder whether any one who is not Welsh-born can understand my delight as we passed along the railway at nightfall and I first felt upon my cheek the soft rich breath of the Welsh meadows, smelling partly of the beloved land and partly of the beloved sea. "Yr Hen Wlad, yr Hen Gartref!" I murmured when at Prestatyn I heard the first Welsh word and saw the first white-washed Welsh cottage. From head to foot I became a Welsh girl again. The loveliness of Hurstcote Manor seemed a dull, grey, far-away house in a dream. But if I had known that I should also find you, my dear! If I had dreamed that I should find Henry!'

And then silence alone would satisfy her. And Snowdon was speaking to us both.

XIII

And what about Sinfi Lovell? In those supreme moments of bliss did Winifred and I think much about Sinfi? Alas, that love and happiness should be so selfish!

When at last the sound of Sinfi's crwth and song came from some spot a good way up the rugged path leading to the summit, it quite startled us.

'That's Sinfi's signal,' said Winnie; 'that is the way we used to call each other when we were children. She used to sing one verse of a Snowdon song, and I used to answer it with another. Upon my word, Henry, I had forgotten all about her. What a shame! We have not seen each other since we parted yesterday at the camp.'

And she sprang up to go.

'No, don't leave me,' I said; 'wait till she comes to us. She's sure to come quite soon enough. Depend upon it she is eager to see how her coup de theatre has prospered.'

'I must really go to her,' said Winifred; 'ever since we left Hurstcote I have fallen in with her wishes in everything.'

'But why?'

'Because I am sure from Mr. D'Arcy's words that she has rendered me some great service, though what it is I can't guess in the least.'

'But what are really the plans of the day of this important Gypsy?'

'There again I can't guess in the least,' said Winifred. 'Probably the walk to the top and then down to Llanberis, and then on to Carnarvon, is really to take place, as originally arranged—only with the slight addition that some one is to join us! I shall soon be back, either alone or with Sinfi, and then we shall know.'

She ran up the path. Against her wish I followed her for a time. She moved towards the same dangerous ledge of rock where I had last seen her on that day before she vanished in the mist.

I cried out as I followed her, 'Winnie, for God's sake don't run that danger!'

'No danger at all,' she cried. 'I know every rock as well as you know every boulder of Raxton Cliffs.'

I watched her poising herself on the ledge; it made me dizzy. Her confidence, however, was so great that I began to feel she was safe; and after she had passed out of sight I returned to the llyn where we had breakfasted.

Sinfi's music ceased, but Winifred did not return. I sat down on the rock and tried to think, but soon found that the feat was impossible. The turbulent waves of my emotion seemed to have washed my brain clear of all thoughts. The mystery in connection with Sinfi was now as great as the mystery connected with the rescue of Winifred from the mattress in Primrose Court. So numbed was my brain that I at last pinched myself to make sure that I was awake. In doing this I seemed to feel in one of my coat pockets a hard substance. Putting my hand into the pocket, I felt the sharp corner of a letter pricking between a finger and its nail. The acute pain assured me that I was awake. I pulled out the letter. It was the one that the servant at the bungalow had given me in the early morning when I called to get my bath. I read the address, which was in a handwriting I did not know:—

'HENRY AYLWIN, ESQ., 'Carnarvon, North Wales.'

The Carnarvon postmark and the words written on the envelope, 'Try Capel Curig,' showed the cause of the delay in the letter's reaching me. In the left-hand corner of the envelope were written the words 'Very urgent. Please forward immediately.' I opened it, and found it to be a letter of great length. I looked at the end and gave a start, exclaiming, 'D'Arcy!'



XVI

D'ARCY'S LETTER

This is how the letter ran:—

HURSTCOTE MANOR.

MY DEAR AYLWIN,

I have just learned by accident that you are somewhere in Wales. I had gathered from paragraphs in the newspapers about you that you were in Japan, or in some other part of the East.

Miss Wynne and Sinfi Lovell are at this moment in Wales, and I write at once to furnish you with some facts in connection with Miss Wynne which it is important for you to know before you meet her. I can imagine your amazement at learning that she you have lost so long has been staying here as my guest. I will tell you all without more preamble.

One day, some little time after I parted from you in the streets of London, I chanced to go into Wilderspin's studio, when I found him in great distress. He told me that the beautiful model who had sat for his picture 'Faith and Love' had suddenly died. The mother of the girl had on the previous day been in and told him that her daughter had died in one of the fits to which at intervals she had been subject.

Wilderspin, in his eccentric way, had always declared that the model was not the woman's daughter. He did not think her, as I did, to have been kidnapped; he believed her to be not a creature of flesh and blood at all, but a spiritual body sent from heaven by his mother in order that he might use her as a model. As to the woman Gudgeon, who laid claim to be her mother, he thought she was suffering from a delusion—a beneficent delusion—in supposing the model to be her daughter. And now he thought that this beautiful phantom from the spirit-world had been recalled because his picture was complete. When I entered the studio he was just starting for the second time, as he told me, to the woman's house, in the belief that the body of the girl which he had seen lying on a mattress was a delusion—a spiritual body, and must by this time have vanished.

I had reasons for wishing to prevent his going there and being again brought into contact with the woman before I saw her myself. From my first seeing the woman and the model, I had found it impossible to believe that there could be any blood relationship between them, for the girl's frame from head to foot was as delicate as the woman's frame from head to foot was coarse and vulgar.

Naturally, therefore, it occurred to me that this was an excellent opportunity to find out the truth of the matter. I determined to go and bully the impudent hag into a confession; but of course Wilderspin was the last man I should choose to accompany me on such a mission. Your relative, Cyril Aylwin, was, as I believed, on the Continent, expecting Wilderspin to join him there, or I might have taken him with me.

I have always had great influence over Wilderspin, and I easily persuaded him to remain in the studio while I went myself to the woman's address, which he gave me. I knew that if the model were really dead she would have to be buried by the parish at a pauper funeral, that is to say, lowered into a deep pit with other paupers. It was painful to me to think of this, and I determined to get her buried myself. So I took a hansom and drove to the squalid court in the neighbourhood of Holborn, where the woman lived.

On reaching the house, I found the door open. Wilderspin had described to me the room occupied by Mrs. Gudgeon, so I went at once upstairs. I found the model upon a mattress, her features horribly contorted, lying in the same clothes apparently in which she had fallen when seized.

In an armchair in the middle of the room was Mrs. Gudgeon, in a drunken sleep so profound that I could not have roused her had I tried. While I stood looking at the girl, something in the appearance of her flesh—its freshness of hue—made me suspect that she was still alive, and that she was only suffering from a seizure of a more acute kind than any the woman had yet seen. As I stood looking at these two it occurred to me that should the model recover from the seizure this would be an excellent and quite unexpected opportunity for me to get her away. The woman, I thought, would after a while wake up, and find to her amazement the body gone of her whom she thought dead. If she had really kidnapped the girl she would be afraid to set any inquiry afoot. She might even perhaps imagine that the girl's relations had traced her, found the dead body, and removed it for burial while she, the kidnapper, was asleep.

After a while the expression of terror on the model's face began to relax, and she soon awoke into that strange condition which had caused Wilderspin to declare that she had been sent from another world. She recognised me in the semi-conscious way in which she recognised all those who were brought into contact with her, and looked into my face with that indescribably sweet smile of hers. From the first she had in her dazed way seemed attached to me, and I had now no difficulty whatever in persuading her to accompany me downstairs and out of the house.

Before going, however, the whim seized me to write on the wall in large letters, with a piece of red drawing-chalk I had in my waistcoat pocket, 'Kidnapper, beware! Jack Ketch is on your track.' I took the girl to my house, and put her under the care of my housekeeper (much to the worthy lady's surprise), who gave her every attention. I then went to Wilderspin's studio.

'Well,' said he, 'there is no body lying there, I suppose?'

'None,' I said.

'Did I not tell you that the spirit-world had called her back? What I saw has vanished, as I expected. How could you suppose that a material body could ever be so beautiful?'

As I particularly wished that the model should, for a time at least, be removed from all her present surroundings, I thought it well to let Wilderspin retain his wild theory as to her disappearance.

I had already arranged to go on the following day to Hurstcote Manor, where several unfinished pictures were waiting for me, and I decided to take the model with me.

Before, however, I started for the country with her, I had the curiosity to call next morning upon the woman in Primrose Court, in order to discover what had been the effect of my stratagem. I found her sitting in a state of excitement, and evidently in great alarm, gazing at the mattress. The words I had written on the wall had been carefully washed out.

'Well, Mrs. Gudgeon,' I said, 'what has become of your daughter?'

'Dead,' she whimpered, 'dead.'

'Yes, I know she's dead,' I said. 'But where is the body?'

'Where's the body? Why, buried, in course,' said the woman.

'Buried? Who buried her?' I said.

'What a question, surelie!' she said, and kept repeating the words in order, as I saw, to give herself time to invent some story. Then a look of cunning overspread her face, and she whimpered, 'Who does bury folks in Primrose Court? The parish, to be sure.'

These words of the woman's showed that matters had taken exactly the course I should have liked them to take. She would tell other inquirers as she had told me, that her daughter had been buried by the parish. No one would take the trouble, I thought, to inquire into it, and the matter would end at once.

So I said to her, 'Oh, if the parish buried her, that's all right; no one ever makes inquiries about people who are buried by the parish.'

This seemed to relieve the woman's mind vastly, and she said, 'In course they don't. What's the use of askin' questions about people as are buried by the parish?'

Not thinking that the time was quite ripe for cross-examining Mrs. Gudgeon as to her real relations to the model, I left her, and that same afternoon I took the model down to Hurstcote Manor, determining to keep the matter a secret from everybody, as I intended to discover, if possible, her identity.

I need scarcely remind you that although you told me some little of the story of yourself and a young lady to whom you were deeply attached, you were very reticent as to the cause of her dementia; and your story ended with her disappearance in Wales. I, for my part, had not the smallest doubt that she had fallen down a precipice and was dead. Everything—especially the fact that you last saw her on the brink of a precipice, running into a volume of mist—pointed to but one conclusion. To have imagined for a moment that she and Wilderspin's model, who had been discovered in the streets of London, were the same, would have been, of course, impossible. Besides, you had given me no description of her personal appearance, nor had you said a word to me as to her style of beauty, which is undoubtedly unique.

When I got the model fairly settled at Hurstcote her presence became a delight to me such as it could hardly have been to any other man. It is difficult for me to describe that delight, but I will try.

Do you by chance remember our talk about animals and the charm they had for me, especially young animals? And do you remember my saying that the most fascinating creature in the world would be a beautiful young girl as unconscious as a child or a young animal; if such a combination of charms were possible? Such a young girl as this it was whom I was now seeing every day and all day. The charm she exercised over me was no doubt partly owing to my own peculiar temperament—to my own hatred of self-consciousness and to an innate shyness which is apt to make me feel at times that people are watching me, when they most likely are doing nothing of the kind.

And charming as she is now, restored to health and consciousness—charming above most young ladies with her sweet intelligence and most lovable nature—the inexpressible witchery I have tried to describe has vanished, otherwise I don't know how I should have borne what I now have brought myself to bear, parting from her.

I seemed to have no time to think about prosecuting inquiries in regard to her identity. I am afraid there was much selfishness in this, but I have never pretended to be an unselfish man.

The one drop of bitterness in my cup of pleasure was the recurrence of the terrible paroxysms to which she was subject.

I was alarmed to find that these became more and more frequent and more and more severe. I felt at last that her system could not stand the strain much longer, and that the end of her life was not far distant.

It was in a very singular way that I came to know her name and also her relations with you. In my original perplexity about finding a model for my Zenelophon, I had bethought me of Sinfi Lovell, who, with a friend of hers named Rhona Boswell, sat to Wilderspin, to your cousin, and others. I had made inquiries about Sinfi, but had been told that she was not now to be had, as she had abandoned London altogether, and was settled in Wales.

One day, however, I was startled by seeing Sinfi walking across the meadows along the footpath leading from the station.

She told me that she had quitted Wales for good, and had left you there, and that on reaching London and calling at one of the studios where she used to sit, she had been made aware of my inquiries after her. As she had now determined to sit a good deal to painters, she had gone to my studio in London. Being told there that I was at Hurstcote Manor, where she had sat to me on several occasions, she had taken the train and come down.

During our conversation the model passed through the garden gate and walked towards the Spinney, and stood looking in a rapt way at the sunset clouds and listening to the birds.

When Sinfi caught sight of her she stood as if petrified, and exclaimed, 'Winnie Wynne! Then she ain't dead; the dukkeripen was true; they'll be married arter all. Don't let her see me suddenly, it might bring on fits.'

Miss Wynne, however, had observed neither Sinfi nor me, and we two passed into the garden without any difficulty.

In the studio Sinfi sat down, and in a state of the deepest agitation she told me much of the story, as far as she knew it, of yourself and Miss Wynne, but I could see that she was not telling me all.

We were both perplexed as to what would be the best course of action to take in regard to Miss Wynne—whether to let her see Sinfi or not, for evidently she was getting worse, the paroxysms were getting more frequent and more severe. They would come without any apparent disturbing cause whatever. Now that I had to connect her you had lost in Wales with the model, many things returned to me which I had previously forgotten, things which you had told me in London. I had quite lately learnt a good deal from Dr. Mivart, who formerly practised near the town in which you lived, but who now lives in London. He had been attending me for insomnia. While speculating as to what would be best to do, it occurred to me that I would write to Mivart, asking him to run down to me at Hurstcote Manor and consult with me, because he had told me that he had given attention to cases of hysteria. I did this, and persuaded Sinfi to remain and to keep out of Miss Wynne's sight. Although Sinfi was still as splendid a woman as ever, I noticed a change in her. Her animal spirits had fled, and she had to me the appearance of a woman in trouble; but what her trouble was I could not guess, and I cannot now guess. Perhaps she had been jilted by some Gypsy swain.

When Dr. Mivart came he was much startled at recognising in Miss Wynne his former patient of Raxton, whom he had attended on her first seizure. He said that it would now be of no use for me to write to you, as it was matter of common knowledge that you had gone to Japan. If it had not been for this I should have written to you at once. He took a very grave view of Miss Wynne's case, and said that her nervous system must shortly succumb to the terrible seizures. Sinfi Lovell was in the room at the time. I asked Dr. Mivart if there was any possible means of saving her life.

'None,' he said, 'or rather there is one which is unavailable.'

'And what is that?' I asked.

'They have a way at the Salpetriere Hospital of curing cases of acute hysteria By transmitting the seizure to a healthy patient by means of a powerful magnet. My friend Marini, of that hospital, has had recently some extraordinary successes of this kind. Indeed, by a strange coincidence, as I was travelling here this morning I chanced to buy a Daily Telegraph, in which this paragraph struck my eye.'

Mivart then pointed out to me a letter from Paris in the Daily Telegraph, giving an account of certain proceedings at the Salpetriere Hospital, and in the same paper there was a long leading article upon the subject. The report of the experiments was to me so amazing that at first I could not bring my mind to believe in it. As you will, I am sure, feel some incredulity, I have cut out the paragraph, and here it is pasted at the bottom of this page:—

'The chief French surgeons and medical professors have, for some time, been carefully studying the effect of mesmerism on the female patients of the Salpetriere Hospital, and M. Marini, a clinical surgeon of that establishment, has just effected a series of experiments, the results of which would seem to open up a new field for medical science. M. Marini tried to prove that certain hysterical symptoms could be transferred by the aid of the magnet from one patient to another. He took two subjects: one a dumb woman afflicted with hysteria, and the other a female who was in a state of hypnotic trance. A screen was placed between the two, and the hysterical woman was then put under the influence of a strong magnet. After a few moments she was rendered dumb, while speech was suddenly restored to the other. Luckily for his healthier patients, however, their borrowed pains and symptoms did not last long.'

And Mivart was able to give me some more extraordinary instances of the transmission of hysterical seizures from one patient to another—instances where permanent cures were effected. [Footnote] Naturally I asked Mivart what befell the new victims of the seizures.

[Footnote: The transmissions here alluded to were mostly effected by M. Babinski of the Salpetriere. They excited great attention in Paris.]

'That depends,' said Mivart, 'upon three circumstances—the acuteness of the seizure, the strength of the recipient's nervous system, and the kind of imagination she has. In all Marini's experiments the new patient has quickly recovered, and the original patient has remained entirely cured and often entirely unconscious that she has ever suffered from the paroxysms at all.'

Mivart went on to say that the case of Miss Wynne was so severe a one that if the new patient's imagination were very strong the risk to her would be exceptionally great.

At the end of this discussion Mivart directed my attention to Sinfi Lovell. She sat as though listening to some voice. Her head was bent forward, her lips were parted, and her eyes were closed. Then I heard her say in a loud whisper, 'Yis, mammy dear, little Sinfi's a-listenin'. Yis, this is the way to make her dukkeripen come true, and then mine can't. Yis, this is the very way. They shall meet again by Knockers' Llyn, where I seed the Golden Hand, and arter that, never shall little Sinfi go agin you, dear. And never no more shall any one on 'em, Gorgio or Gorgie, bring their gries and their beautiful livin'-waggins among tents o' ourn. Never no more shall they jine our breed—never no more, never no more. And then my dukkeripen can't come true.'

Then, springing up, she said, 'I'll stand the risk anyhow. You may pass the cuss on to me if you can.'

'The seizure has nothing to do with any curse,' said Mivart, 'but if you think it has, you are the last person to whom it should be transmitted.'

'Oh, never fear,' said Sinfi; 'Gorgio cuss can't touch Romany. But if you find you can pass the cuss on to me, I'll stand the cuss all the same.'

I always admired this noble girl very much, and I pointed out to her the danger of the experiment to one of her temperament, but assured her the superstition about the Gorgio curse was entirely an idle one.

'Danger or no danger,' she said, 'I'll chance it; I'll chance it.'

'It might be the death of you,' I said, 'if you believe that the seizure is a curse.'

'Death!' she murmured, with a smile. 'It ain't death as is likely to scare a Romany chi, 'specially if she happens to want to die;' and then she said aloud, 'I tell you I mean to chance it, but I think my dear old daddy ought to know about it. So if you'll jist write to him at Gypsy Dell, by Rington, and ask him to come and see me here, I'm right well sure he'll come and see me at wonst. He can't read the letter hisself, of course, but the Scollard can, and so can Rhona Boswell. One on 'em will read it to him, and I know he'll come at wonst. I shouldn't like to run such a risk without my dear blessed old daddy knowin' on it.'

It ended in Mivart's writing to Sinfi's father, and Panuel Lovell turned up the next evening in a great state of alarm as to what he was wanted for. Panuel's opposition to the scheme was so strong that I refused to urge the point.

It was a very touching scene between him and Sinfi.

'You know what your mammy told you about you and the Gorgios,' said he, with tears trickling down his cheeks. 'You know the dukkeripen said as you wur to beware o' Gorgios, because a Gorgio would come to the Kaulo Camloes as would break your heart.'

She looked at her father for a second, and then she broke into a passion of tears, and threw herself upon the old man's neck, and I thought I heard her murmur, 'It's broke a'ready, daddy.' But I really am not quite sure that she did not say the opposite of this.

I had no idea before how strong the family ties are between the Gypsies. It seems to me that they are stronger than with us, and I was really astonished that Sinfi could, in order to be of service to two people of another race, resist the old Gypsy's appeal. She did, however, and it was decided that at the next seizure the experiment should be made, and Dr. Mivart telegraphed to London for his assistant to bring one of Marini's magnets.

We had not long to wait, for the very next day, just as Mivart was preparing to leave for London, Miss Wynne was seized by another paroxysm. It was more severe than any previous one—so severe, indeed, that it seemed to me that it must be the last.

It was with great reluctance that Mivart consented to use Sinfi as the recipient of the seizure, because of her belief that it was the result of a curse. However, he at last consented, and ordered two couches to be placed side by side with a large magnet between them. Then Miss Wynne was laid on one couch, and Sinfi Lovell on the other; a screen was placed between the couches, and then the wonderful effect of the magnetism began to show itself.

The transmission was entirely successful, and Miss Wynne awoke as from a trance, and I saw as it were the beautiful eyes change as the soul returned to them. She was no longer the fascinating child who had become part of my life. She was another person, a stranger whose acquaintance I had now to make, and whose friendship I had yet to win. Indeed the change in the expression was so great that it was really difficult to believe that the features were the same. This was owing to the wonderful change in the eyes.

To Sinfi Lovell the seizure was transmitted in a way that was positively uncanny—she passed into a paroxysm so severe that Mivart was seriously alarmed for her. Her face assumed the same expression of terror which I had seen on Miss Wynne's face, and she uttered the cry, 'Father!' and then fell back into a state of rigidity.

'The transmission was just in time,' said Mivart; 'the other patient would never have survived this.'

Strong as Sinfi Lovell was, the effect of the transmission upon her nervous system was to me appalling. Indeed it was much greater, Mivart said, than he was prepared for. Poor Panuel Lovell kept gazing at us, and then said, 'It's cruel to let one woman kill herself for another; but when her as kills herself is a Romany, and t'other a Gorgie, it's what I calls a blazin' shame. She would do it, my poor chavi would do it. "No harm can't come on it," says she, "because a Gorgio cuss can't touch a Romany." An' now see what's come on it.'

Mivart would not hear of Sinfi's returning at present to the Gypsies, as she required special treatment. Hence there was no course left open to us but that of keeping her here attended by a nurse whom Mivart sent. While the recurrent paroxysms were severe, Sinfi was to be carefully kept apart from Miss Wynne until it should become quite clear how much and how little Miss Wynne remembered of her past life. Mivart, however, leaned to the opinion that nothing could recall to her mind the catastrophe that caused the seizure. By an unforeseen accident they met, and I was at first fearful of the consequences, but soon found that Mivart's theory was right. No ill effects whatever followed the meeting. Sinfi's transmitted paroxysms have gradually become less acute and less frequent, and Miss Wynne has been constantly with her and ministering to her; the affection between them seems to have been of long standing, and very great.

I found that Miss Wynne remembered all her past life down to her first seizure on Raxton sands, while everything that had since passed was a blank. Since her recovery her presence here has seemed to shed a richer sunlight over the old place, but of course she is no longer the fairy child who before her cure fascinated me more than any other living creature could have done.

Apart from her sweet companionship, she has been of great service to me in my art. When I learnt who she was, I should not have dreamed of asking her to sit to me as a model without having first taken your views, and you were, as I understood, abroad; but she herself generously volunteered to sit to me for a picture I had in my mind, 'The Spirit of Snowdon.' It was a failure, however, and I abandoned it. Afterwards, knowing that I was at my wits' end for a model in the painting I have been for a long time at work upon, 'Zenelophon,' she again offered to sit to me. The result has been that the picture, now near completion, is by far the best thing I have ever done.

I had noticed for some time that Sinfi's mind seemed to be running upon some project. Neither Miss Wynne nor I could guess what it was. But a few days ago she proposed that Miss Wynne and she should take a trip to North Wales in order to revisit the places endeared to them both by reminiscences of their childhood. Nothing seemed more natural than this. And Sinfi's noble self-sacrifice for Miss Wynne had entitled her to every consideration, and indeed every indulgence.

And yesterday they started for Wales. It was not till after they were gone that I learnt from another newspaper paragraph that you did not go to Japan, and are in Wales. And now I begin to suspect that Sinfi's determination to go to Wales with Miss Wynne arose from her having suddenly learnt that you are still there.

And now, my dear Alywin, having acted as a somewhat prosaic reporter of these wonderful events, I should like to conclude my letter with a word or two about what took place when I parted from you in the streets of London. I saw then that your sufferings had been very great, and since that time they must have been tenfold greater. And now I rejoice to think that, of all the men in this world who have ever loved, you, through this very suffering, have been the most fortunate. As Job's faith was tried by Heaven, so has your love been tried by the power which you call 'circumstance' and which Wilderspin calls 'the spiritual world.' All that death has to teach the mind and the heart of man you have learnt to the very full, and yet she you love is restored to you, and will soon be in your arms. I, alas! have long known that the tragedy of tragedies is the death of a beloved mistress, or a beloved wife. I have long known that it is as the King of Terrors that Death must needs come to any man who knows what the word 'love' really means. I have never been a reader of philosophy, but I understand that the philosophers of all countries have been preaching for ages upon ages about resignation to Death—about the final beneficence of Death—that 'reasonable moderator and equipoise of justice,' as Sir Thomas Browne calls him. Equipoise of justice indeed! He who can read with tolerance such words as these most have known nothing of the true passion of love for a woman as you and I understand it. The Elizabethans are full of this nonsense; but where does Shakespeare, with all his immense philosophical power, ever show this temper of acquiescence? All his impeachments of Death have the deep ring of personal feeling—dramatist though he was. But, what I am going to ask you is, How shall the modern materialist, who you think is to dominate the Twentieth Century and all the centuries to follow—how shall he confront Death when a beloved mistress is struck down? When Moschus lamented that the mallow, the anise, and the parsley had a fresh birth every year, whilst we men sleep in the hollow earth a long, unbounded, never-waking sleep, he told us what your modern materialist tells us, and he re-echoed the lamentation which, long before Greece had a literature at all, had been heard beneath Chaldean stars and along the mud-banks of the Nile. Your bitter experience made you ask materialism, What comfort is there in being told that death is the very nursery of new life, and that our heirs are our very selves, if when you take leave of her who was and is your world it is 'Vale, vale, in aeternum vale'? The dogged resolution with which at first you fought and strove for materialism struck me greatly. It made you almost rude to me at our last meeting.

When I parted from you I should have been blind indeed had I failed to notice how scornfully you repudiated my suggestion that you should replace the amulet in the tomb from which it had been stolen. I did not then know that the tomb was your father's. Had I known it my suggestion would have been much more emphatic. I saw that you had the greatest difficulty in refraining from laughing in my face when I said to you that you would eventually replace it. Yes, you had great difficulty in refraining from laughing. I did not take offence. I felt sure that the cross was in some way connected with the young lady you had lost in Wales, but I could not guess how. Had you told me that the cross had been taken from your father's tomb I should no doubt have connected it with the cry of 'Father' which had, I knew, several times been uttered in Wilderspin's studio by the model in her paroxysms, and I should have earlier done what I was destined to do—I should earlier have brought you together. From sympathy that sprang from a deep experience I knew you better than you knew yourself. When I learnt from Sinfi Lovell that you had fulfilled my prophecy I did not laugh. Tears rather than laughter would have been more in my mood, for I realised the martyrdom you must have suffered before you were impelled to do it. I knew how you must have been driven by sorrow—driven against all the mental methods and traditions of your life—into the arms of supernaturalism. But you were simply doing what Hamlet would have done in such circumstances—what Macbeth would have done, and what he would have done who spoke to the human heart through their voices. All men, I believe, have Macbeth's instinct for making 'assurance doubly sure,' and I cannot imagine the man who, entangled as you were in a net of conflicting evidence—the evidence of the spiritual and the evidence of the natural world—would not, if the question were that of averting a curse from acting on a beloved mistress, have done as you did. That paralysis of Hamlet's will which followed when the evidence of two worlds hung in equipoise before him, no one can possibly understand better than I. For it was exactly similar to my own condition on that never-to-be-forgotten night when she whom I lost...

While the marvellous sight fell, or appeared to fall, upon my eyes, my blood, like Hamlet's, became so masterful that my reason seemed nothing but a blind and timorous guide. No sooner had the sweet vision fled than my reason, like Hamlet's, rose and rejected it. It was not until I became acquainted with the rationale of sympathetic manifestations—it was not till I learnt, by means of that extraordinary book of your father's, which seems to have done its part in turning friend Wilderspin's head, what is the supposed method by which the spiritual world acts upon the material world—acts by the aid of those same natural bonds which keep the stars in their paths—that my blood and my reason became reconciled, and a new light came to me. And I knew that this would be your case. Yes, my dear Aylwin, I knew that when the issues of Life are greatly beyond the common, and when our hearts are torn as yours has been torn, and when our souls are on fire with a flame such as that which I saw was consuming you, the awful possibilities of this universe—of which we, civilised men or savage, know nothing—will come before us, and tease our hearts with strange wild hopes, 'though all the "proofs" of all the logicians should hold them up to scorn.'

I am, my dear Aylwin,

Your sincere Friend,

T. D'ARCY.



XVII

THE TWO DUKKERIPENS

Was the mystery at an end? Was there one point in this story of stories which this letter of D'Arcy's had not cleared up? Yes, indeed there was one. What motive—or rather, what mixture of motives—had impelled Sinfi to play her part in restoring Winifred to me? Her affection for me was, I knew, as strong as my own affection for her. But this I attributed largely to the mysterious movements of the blood of Fenella Stanley which we both shared. In many matters there was a kinship of taste between us, such as did not exist between me and Winnie, who was far from being scornful of conventions, and to whom the little Draconian laws of British 'Society' were not objects of mere amusement, as they were to me and Sinfi.

All this I attributed to that 'prepotency of transmission in descent' which I knew to be one of the Romany characteristics. All this I attributed, I say, to the far-reaching influence of Fenella Stanley.

But would this, coupled with her affection for Winifred, have been strong enough to conquer Sinfi's terror of a curse and its supposed power? And then that colloquy recorded by D'Arcy with what she believed to be her mother's spirit—those words about 'the two dukkeripens'—what did they mean? At one moment I seemed to guess their meaning in a dim way, and at the next they seemed more inexplicable than ever. But be their import what it might, one thing was quite certain—Sinfi had saved Winifred, and there swept through my very being a passion of gratitude to the girl who had acted so nobly which for the moment seemed to drown all other emotions. I had not much time, however, for bringing my thoughts to bear upon this new source of wonderment; for I suddenly saw Winifred and Sinfi descending the steep path towards me.

But what a change there was in Sinfi! The traces of illness had fled entirely from her face, and were replaced by the illumination of the triumphant soul within—a light such as I could imagine shining on the features of Boadicea fresh from a successful bout with the foe of her race. Even the loveliness of Winnie seemed for the moment to pale before the superb beauty of the Gypsy girl, whom the sun was caressing as though it loved her, shedding a radiance over her picturesque costume, and making the gold coins round her neck shine like dewy whin-flowers struck by the sunrise.

I understood well that expression of triumph. I knew that, with her, imagination was life itself. I knew that this imagination of hers had just escaped from the sting of the dominant thought which was threatening to turn a supposed curse into a curse indeed.

I went to meet them.

'I promised to bring her livin' mullo,' said Sinfi, 'and I have kept my word, and now we are all going up to the top together.'

Winnie at once proceeded to pack up the breakfast things in Sinfi's basket. While she was doing this Sinfi and I went to the side of the llyn.

'Sinfi, I know all—all you have done for Winnie, all you have done for me.'

'You know about me takin' the cuss?' she said in astonishment. 'Gorgio cuss can't touch Romany, they say, but it did touch me. I wur very bad, brother. Howsomedever, it's all gone now. But how did you come to know about it? Winnie don't know herself, so she couldn't ha' told you; and I promised Mr. D'Arcy that if ever I wur to see you anywheres I wouldn't talk about it—leaseways not till he could tell you hisself or write to you full.'

'Winnie does not know about it,' I said, 'but I do. I know that in order to save her life—in order to save us both—you allowed her illness to pass on to you, at your own peril. But you mustn't talk of its being a curse, Sinfi. It was just an illness like any other illness, and the doctor passed it on to you in the same way that doctors sometimes do pass on such illnesses. Doctors can't cure curses, you know. You will soon be quite well again, and then you will forget all about what you call the curse.'

'I'm well enough now, brother; but see, Winnie has packed the things, and she's waiting to go up.'

We then began the ascent.

Ah, that ascent! I wish I had time and space to describe it. Up the same path we went which Sinfi and I had followed on that memorable morning when my heart was as sad as it was buoyant now.

Reaching the top, we sat down in the hut and made our simple luncheon. Winnie was a great favourite with the people there, and she could not get away from them for a long time. We went down to Bwlch Glas, and there we stood gazing at the path that leads to Llanberis.

I had not observed, but Winnie evidently had, that Sinfi wanted to speak to me alone; for she wandered away pretending to be looking for a certain landmark which she remembered; and Sinfi and I were left together.

'Brother,' said Sinfi, 'I ain't a-goin' to Llanberis an' Carnarvon with you two. You take that path; I take this.'

She pointed to the two downward paths.

'Surely you are not going to leave us at a moment like this?' I said.

'That's jist what I am a-goin' to do,' she said. 'This is the very time an' this is the very place where I am a-goin' to leave you an' all Gorgios.'

'Part on Snowdon, Sinfi!' I exclaimed.

'That's what we're a-goin' to do, brother. What I sez to myself when I made up my mind to take the cuss on me wur this: "I'll make her dukkeripen come true; I'll take her to him in Wales, and then we'll part. We'll part on Snowdon, an' I'll go one way an' they'll go another, jist like them two streams as start from Gorphwysfa an' go runnin' down till one on 'em takes the sea at Carnarvon, and t'other at Tremadoc." Yis, brother, it's on Snowdon where you an' Winnie Wynne sees the last o' Sinfi Lovell.'