resting her head upon her knee. "You have read too long aloud, while I, who would fain have come and relieved you, have been making ready with much sorrow for our departure from this beautiful place on the morrow. I fear me the mountains have made me faithless to the valley and the river I love so well!" "Nay, I am not weary," answered Percival. "I did but close my eyes because I saw a vision. Methought as you crossed the grass I was again by the pool at midnight, beholding the mystic maiden, and the illusion is not yet dispelled!" He looked at her with a smile, and yet with so perplexed an expression that Primrose laughed merrily in spite of her sad heart. "As we shall part on the morrow," she said, and her voice trembled a little as she spoke, "and as I would not have you ever wondering and perplexed in mind until we meet again, I will e'en make my confession. I was myself the immortal maiden!" "I have suspected it!" said the chaplain triumphantly, "yet I have not been able to account for your so deceiving me. Was it so indeed? Then now I can understand." "Indeed I did not then know you were there!" cried Primrose eagerly. "Until I saw yon watching me from your dark corner under the rock, I thought in truth that no one saw my folly but Lady Rosamond and Sir Ivor, and you, dear Lady Bryn Afon! It was at Lady Rosamond's bidding I played the maiden's part, since she declared she had no patience to wait for the true vision, and I would do just as well, moreover saving her from having had her climb for nought! And lest any one should perchance be near besides ourselves, she cleverly threw a large stone into the centre of the pool at the moment when I should by right have plunged therein to my watery abode, in order, as she said, that the illusion should be complete, trusting that the sudden sound might make a chance spectator close his eyes for a moment in horror, and so let me slip into my hiding-place behind the rock unobserved." "She truly devised well," said the chaplain with a laugh, "for it was even so with me, whom she had persuaded into proving with mine own eyes the truth of her wondrous tale! As you stood by the lake, I heard the sudden splashing, and clasped my hands before my eyes in horror at the thought that I must needs see you plunge into that black abyss; and when I withdrew them I saw but the ripples on the surface of the water--and you----" "Were laughing in glee not many yards away," said Lady Bryn Afon with a smile. "In truth it was a naughty trick of Lady Rosamond's, but Primrose did it right well." "But indeed I had no thought that you were there!" said Primrose, looking at the chaplain earnestly. "I truly thought it but a jest among ourselves. Now I know why my Lady Rosamond bade me beware of you, for that you looked upon me as a child of the Evil One!" "I am over cruelly maligned," said Percival, swallowing with difficulty the eager words with which he was on the point of