compounded, and so to perfect and fulfil in beneficent action for this unhappy family his own dawning knowledge. My spare time has been devoted to this study, and hour after hour I have sat in my laboratory, deeply engrossed in my experiments, which, many years since, I had good reason to believe rewarded with success, although it is but this very night that has witnessed my last crowning endeavour! Well--your fair Primrose has long been under a course of this my famous elixir, her guardian having from her infancy administered it to her mixed with portions of her daily food, at my orders, conjoined with those of her mother. And this powerful antidote to the evil we sought to avert from her, combined with her innocent and healthful life and perfect ignorance of the curse, together with her careful up-bringing apart from her doomed family, have, I doubt not for a moment, secured to her a perfect immunity from the sufferings of her race; and I fully concur in the belief her mother has already expressed to you, that she is wholly free from the blight of her forefathers. You have, I know well, made much study of this particular ill in all its bearings, and I commend your bold and unselfish hesitation to take a step which might be fraught with ill for yet more future generations; but I have made yet deeper study than you, Percival, as befits my greater years, and I bid you lay aside all doubt and fear, and seek in all honest confidence and truth to fulfil your life and hers in the way appointed by Heaven for your greater mutual happiness. "I have already held conversation upon this matter with Lady Bryn Afon--a liberty you will perchance think? but I love you both as my children, and have long since noted your growing secret affection one for the other--and I have assured her that in the marriage of Shanno with such an one as yourself, who have surely been chosen by Heaven, with special purpose, to be her life's protector and saviour from the doom of her race, doth verily lie the fair young girl's best and surest happiness."