"You seem greatly devoted to my father," said Primrose, one day when they had been speaking much together of him, and of that sad weakness which it was Percival's life-aim to combat wherever he found it. "And since he has the misfortune to be addicted to so sad a failing, it seems to me wonderful that in the goodness of God you of all men should have been chosen by him to be his friend and chaplain." "I love your father for his own sake," said Percival, "having learned to do so in my boyhood's days, when, during sundry visits to Sir Ivor's town residence in my vacations, I have frequently met him. But I have moreover a special reason for devotion to the House of Bryn Afon, which, methinks, you know not, and of which I will tell you, an you permit me. You know I am, on my mother's side, the last direct descendant of the luckless Ap Gryffyth, the last King of Wales, whose name was betrayed by a Bryn Afon to Edward I., and whose head, as the chronicler hath it, was hung up, after his body had been slain in battle, upon the gates of the city of Carnarvon." "I knew you were the last Ap Gryffyth," exclaimed Primrose, "but I never knew indeed that it had been a Bryn Afon who betrayed the unfortunate king! Was it so indeed? Methought my father's family had ever been renowned as bearing special loyalty to their sovereign?" "So it was," he answered. "Lord Bryn Afon was his sovereign's dearest friend, but in a moment of weakness--the cause of which I must not reveal, since I should thereby betray the family secret, which you are not yet to learn--he betrayed him into the hands of the English; for which act he afterwards suffered the most grievous remorse, and not only so, but, I grieve to say, that when he crawled in despair and wretchedness to Ap Gryffyth's feet, to sue his pardon, as the unfortunate king was being seized upon the battlefield, Ap Gryffyth spurned him with his foot, and in the bitterness of having proved his bosom friend faithless, invoked upon his head a curse so awful, that all who heard it trembled, and the miserable earl fell senseless on the ground. That curse, uttered by my ancestor, sweet Mistress Primrose, is the one which, in deadly fulfilment of his words, has been visited upon the Bryn Afons from generation to generation from that time until now, no heir to the doomed house having ever escaped the terrible effects of those awful imprecations. Do you wonder then, that I, knowing as I do the curse to be no imaginary woe, but a fearful reality, have resolved to devote my life to its removal, or, at the least, its mitigation, by every means in my power?" "It is a noble resolve!" said Primrose, her eyes kindling with enthusiasm, "and surely it is a sacrifice few could demand of you, since the fault lay on the side of my poor father's unhappy family, and that his miserable ancestor drew upon himself, by his own disgraceful deed of betrayal, the awful punishment!"