think not so, and were he so to do, I could bear his chiding! Listen, my sweet daughter. For reasons I thought good, I told him some weeks since of our relationship, so that in any converse you may, during our stay here, hold with him, you may feel at ease and rest, knowing that betwixt us there is no concealment, and that I have, by suffering him thus to share our secret, shown both to yourself and him the great love and trust I bear him and place in him. Perchance, my sweet one, you perceive some hidden current in my thoughts, and marvel that I do not speak more plainly; but wait a little in patience, and enjoy your summer days together, and my secret thoughts may in time be revealed." So, embracing her daughter affectionately, they parted for the night, and Shanno sought her couch, wondering much over her mother's words, and trembling with a secret joy she dared not yet openly contemplate. The days that followed were bright with a radiance, for which the summer sunshine, glorious though it was, could claim but little credit. The readings and harp-playings by the brook-side, the rambles on the mountain, the sweet twilight talks in the warm late evenings, in the copse, or in some shady nook on the hillside, all bore some subtle charm, felt none the less because of Lady Bryn Afon's presence, and indeed felt by herself, in her love and sympathy, hardly less keenly than by the two young lovers themselves. For lovers they could no longer, in their secret hearts, deny themselves to be, and Primrose could not fail to note, though no word of love had as yet been interchanged between them, that the veil of reserve so often worn by Percival, and falling like a sudden wall between them during the previous summer, now never shadowed their pleasant intercourse, nor suddenly broke off the sweet interchange of those confidences into which they were wont to drift during any few happy moments in which they found themselves alone. Yet she noted likewise that the chaplain's face bore signs of struggle and conflict waged with his own soul during the past year--conflict, the reason of which she could not know, though she might dimly guess at its cause in her own most secret ponderings; but surely leaving the mark of its severity upon the pure and noble countenance, of which she daily made loving study, and which, in its mingled power and sweetness, strength and holiness, exerted a voiceless influence over her own soul, uplifting it in greater love to that Holy Being whose human semblance it was permitted in its measure to wear.