greeted me with a frank manliness that put my diplomacy to the rout, and insisted on bearing me off straightway to the Hall. I was his cousin, he said, and quite a near relation in a Cambrian point of view, and I must be his guest, in spite of the silly misunderstanding of half a century back. No, no; blood was thicker than water, and he should feel himself insulted if any kinsman came within ten miles of his roof-tree without harbouring there. Thus it occurred that I became a visitor at Talglyn Hall.
Mr. Griffith, a widower, had five children to cheer his hearth, and of these three were daughters. The two eldest were handsome enough, but Ellen, their younger sister, then scarcely seventeen, was as beautiful and winning as a fairy. No wonder that I admired her. Admired is a cold, pale phrase. She was born to be loved, and I loved her with a deep, strong love over which time has never gained the mastery. I do not wish to linger on that happy period of alternate hope and fear, of broken words eked out by glances, and all the petulant changes of passion. Suffice it that my love was returned at last, and that before my long visit was at an end Ellen had plighted me her simple troth. I went honestly to Mr. Griffith, and told him all. He was not displeased. He appeared, in fact, hardly to be surprised. Lovers, indeed, are generally very transparent in their wily stratagems for hoodwinking the world, and even the most guileless household is speedily aware of the progress of an attachment. But Mr. Griffith, though not averse to receiving me as a son-in-law, was not willing that his daughter should marry at seventeen, and was besides desirous that time should test whether we, the principal parties in the case, really knew our own minds. We both thought this decision very tyrannical and absurd. I am sure that it was right, and kind, and wise. For a year Ellen and I separated. I was to work heartily at the bar, as before; the Griffiths were to travel, to visit watering-places and cities, and to vary their usual retired mode of life, in order that Ellen might see something of the world before she irrevocably fixed her fate in it. And, if all went well, and we young people continued of the same opinion, after the lapse of a twelvemonth, why then—
Then! How cruel seemed the suspense and the banishment; how certain that our sentiments would be unchanged a year hence, fifty years hence, my younger readers may ask their own hearts. We obeyed. I not only obtained some credit as a rising junior at the bar, where I already possessed a certain footing—more due, I dare say, to circumstance than merit—but I won the consent and approbation of all my relatives to the match. I was not dependent on them or on my profession for support, but Squire Griffith was a great stickler for such matters, and he was not easy until I had induced my mother to write him a letter solemnly abjuring the feud between their parents—the reason of which had been, I believe, a dispute at long whist—and consenting formally to the marriage. And now the weary waiting was over, the year was out, and I was at Talglyn Hall again to claim my bride. All went smilingly with us. Ellen had the old loving look in her dear blue eyes; she had been courted and flattered, but no one had been able to win away her heart from me, and the Squire admitted that never had a probation turned out more satisfactory than ours. All the family were kind, warmhearted people; they welcomed me cordially among them; they were willing to hail me as a brother, though they did grudge a little at times that I should rob them of the light of their home, the darling of them all, for Ellen was both. She had been very pretty a year before, but had now expanded like a flower, and was as sweet a type of the more fragile order of womanhood as ever existed. I was surprised to see how much she had developed in so short a time, but she loved me none the less for the greater experience of life which she had gained in the past year. Our wedding-day was fixed; the preparations were nearly completed, and my sisters, who were to be bridesmaids jointly with Ellen’s sisters, were shortly expected at Talglyn. And now but a few days intervened between me and the crowning happiness of my life—that happiness which was never to be.
I have painted nothing as yet but a picture of hope and happiness, a sunny sea and white-sailed pleasure-barks gaily gliding over the soft summer waves. Now comes the blacker sketch of wreck and storm. Ellen had one fault, if fault be not too harsh a word, one flaw in her nature. She had a pretty waywardness, an impatience of contradiction that never degenerated into peevishness, never became imperious, but which in one endowed with a less sweet temper would infallibly have done so. As it was, it rather took the form of a half playful defiance, so winning, so full of grace, that you could scarcely have the heart to wish it away. But there were times when Ellen’s petulant caprice became a source of terror to those who loved her best. I have known her persist in maintaining her seat on a plunging, kicking horse, full of vice and mettle, and which exerted every sinew and every artifice to hurl from the saddle its slender but unconquerable rider. Equally, I have seen her run, mocking our cowardice, along the trunk of a fallen tree that bridged a cataract, slippery though that tree was with the washing of ceaseless spray, and perched at a fearful height above the ragged rocks and the dark pool below. And in a mountain excursion, no one, not even her daredevil young brothers, ventured so close to the most dangerous precipices as Ellen did, laughing the while. Yet she was no Amazon, but when the whim was over, showed all a girl’s timidity in face of peril; it was contradiction that nettled her to rashness. One evening, after a happy day spent partly on the hills and partly in boating on the little lake, the conversation turned, somehow, on the superstitions of Wales. One legend called forth another, and none of her relatives had such a store of these weird tales as Ellen, or told them so charmingly and simply. At last she related a particular story which I have but too much reason to remember, which has burnt into my brain like a fiery brand, the story of the Lady of Cader Idris. The legend has reference to the Welsh proverb, so old, that it is