have striven to avert from you every chance of its influence, I feel that it were better to keep you still in ignorance so long as it shall please God. "The following morning, when my husband was once more in possession of his sober senses, I entreated him to tell me if the tale he had told me were indeed true, and he assured me that it was so, but with bitter regret that he should unawares have allowed me to share its burden; for he was still ever loving and tender with me, and I too, in spite of my sorrows, loved him dearly. "But now must follow the most bitter portion of my story. Appalled at what I had heard, I took, during the sleepless hours of the ensuing night, a stern resolution. That very day I had looked forward, with all a young wife's pride and joy, to whispering in my husband's ear a new-found secret, which, I well knew, would be to him no less a source of joy and delight than to myself; but now--I dared not utter it! I dared scarce dwell myself upon the thought, that a child of mine must bear the woe which for three hundred years and more no Bryn Afon had escaped! My brain reeled with the terror and misery of it, and my resolve was taken. My husband should never know my cherished secret, and my child should be saved from the dread curse which hung like a sword over the head of its unhappy father. Next day I told my husband that a strong desire had taken possession of me to make myself more fit to wear the honours of a lady of the House of Bryn Afon, by educating myself in those arts of learning and grace in which I knew myself to be so sadly deficient, and I begged him, on my knees, to send me away from him for the space of two or three years, into a convent in France or elsewhere, where I might grow more worthy of my dignity as his chosen wife, and whence I might return to him with the full consciousness that I should not disgrace by any acts of folly or ignorance the great name I bore. How I gained my point I scarce know, for he was grievously loth to consent to so painful a parting, yet at last my tears and prayers, and, I think, a certain sense that I had reason in my request, prevailed over him, and he allowed me to depart, promising that he would not seek me out in my retirement, nor disturb the quiet of my mind and studies by any communication with me whatever during my absence. Ere I left him, I begged his physician, the Black Horseman, who was ever our most faithful friend, to have him always in his most tender keeping the while I was absent from him, and through his kind assistance (for he only in the world had knowledge of my secret) I was placed in a small convent in Brittany, in private apartments, under the special supervision of the Lady Abbess--a lady he had known well in his youth, and in whom he placed the fullest confidence, and in whose loving hands a sweet sense of peace and security stole over my agonised spirit ere I had been many weeks in her company. Under