"I seek to know," said Percival steadily, and meeting boldly the eagle glance of the physician, "whether, as an honest and true physician, you can assure me that in her whom I love the curse has truly, as her mother affirms, lost its power, and become, through the means used to preserve her from its toils, wholly dead? On your answer to that question depends my course of action----" "And also your life's happiness--and hers?" said Rhiwallon sharply. "Mine own, truly," answered the chaplain sadly. "Would to God her own may not be as yet wholly in my keeping!" "It is more in your keeping, my young friend, than you wot of, I trow," said the Black Horseman; "but enough of that--it is the maiden's own part to make such confession--not mine. And what," he suddenly demanded fiercely, breaking off abruptly in his speech, "what will you do, Percival, an I tell you that the ill lurks as surely in fair Shanno's veins as in those of all her forefathers?" The chaplain's face blanched to a deadly whiteness, and he clutched the arm of his chair convulsively. "I shall renounce my cherished dream," he answered steadily, looking the Black Horseman full in the face, "and live and die in her service, but unwed!" "And break your heart, forsooth?" said the physician, his keen, glittering eyes still fixed on Percival, as though he would read into his inmost soul. "My heart is in God's keeping," answered the young man bravely, "and must be strong for His service whate'er may betide. I must live to fulfil my appointed tasks for Him, and to bear the sorrows of her I vainly love, if such blessing may be vouchsafed me. If the worst befall, our love will not be in vain hereafter." "It shall not be in vain in this present world!" cried Rhiwallon, his eyes flashing strange fire, and his thin nervous fingers working restlessly. "Percival, I too love your fair Primrose--not as you love her, nor as I loved _her_"--and he waved his hand towards the sweet face of Lady Gwendolen--"but as I should love my own dear daughter, had I such. And loving her from her cradle for the likeness she bore to yon ill-starred girl, I vowed to save her, an it were possible, from the doom which might in her turn await her. You know already from her unhappy mother's lips how I alone shared with her the secret of the child's existence, and how it has been my lot and my privilege to watch over her these many years past in her lowly home by the riverside, where from time to time, in my appointed visits, I took much secret as well as open note of her fair growth and health of mind and body. You see this liquid I hold in my hand? Its secret was bequeathed to me by my father, who, believing it to be in its perfected state an infallible remedy for the evils suffered by the House of Bryn Afon, charged me earnestly to spare no pains in its further development, but to devote myself especially to the study of the marvellous properties of the secret herb of which it is