"For nearly two years you, my sweet unconscious baby, shared my convent solitude, and beguiled my long hours of study with your infant wiles; and during that time I formed the plan of committing you to the care of Jack the boatman, whose character I had from childhood well known and trusted, and in whose charge, albeit under the very shadow of your own blighted home, I felt I could sooner bring my heart to leave you than anywhere else. The Lady Abbess would fain have kept you at her side, but I would not have you brought up in the Roman faith, neither could I endure the thought of the sea ever rolling betwixt us, so at the close of the bright spring month of April, just after your second birthday, I brought you over to the land of my birth, where, hiding ourselves with trusted friends of Rhiwallon's, my ever faithful friend and physician, in that lowly homestead far up in the mountains, which you know and love as the farm Glyn Helen, we played together through the spring and summer days, and you learned to call yourself by your baby name of 'Little Miss Primrose,' as your infant feet wandered hither and thither in search after the flowers you loved. Just those few short months I sunned myself in the light of your bright infant presence in the loneliness of our mountain retreat, ere I could summon courage for that terrible moment of agony, when, on a dark and raging winter's night, after walking mile after mile with you in my arms amid driving rain and howling winds, I arrived at the bridge built by the boatman across the Gwynnon, close to his own home, and chancing there to meet him in the midst of the frail footpath, placed my warm living burden in his arms, and rushed away into the blackness of the night, well-nigh mad with the bitter aching of my heart. How I lived through the next few days I know not, and but for the care of the Black Horseman, whom I had summoned to meet me at Caer Cynau, I must verily have lost my mind by reason of my agony; but his tender ministrations restored me to health, if not to happiness, and under his charge I journeyed to town, to my husband's home, where, after our strange separation, he received me with loving welcome and open arms, finding in my new accomplishments and apt acquaintance with the French and Italian tongues that I had used the time of my absence in the manner I had promised, and rejoicing with a boyish delight, which used to be one of his great charms, over what he was pleased to call the 'wonderful progress' I had made in my various studies, as well as over the added dignity and grace of person and carriage which he vowed I had gained during the three years of our separation. Nothing at any time in the years that followed ever led him to have the least suspicion of his unknown daughter's existence; but how often my heart has been torn asunder by his repeated wish that God had given us children! And how it was well-nigh burst within me in times past,