"Believe me, sweetheart," he answered, "your mother's plan for us all is well. The knowledge I share with her of that which blights your father's life shows me clearly that were you now to share with him that life in the close relationship of father and daughter, even for the space of this one year only, which must needs elapse before our marriage, you would but subject yourself to the dread influences which your mother has given up her very life to avert from you, and this without power to avert them from him who has long since been their unhappy prey. Whereas by our marriage following immediately upon your being presented to him as his daughter, and by our beginning together that life in which I pray God I may have grace and strength from Him to shield you from all ill, and from aught in your intercourse with him which might prove harmful to you, your mother and I both trust that no breath of evil influence shall e'er ensue from those meetings with him from time to time, which it shall then ever be our joy to promote between you. You, sweetheart, I trow, will ever love me well enough to trust that I will never keep you from your father's side when I know it safe and well for you to be there? Already does the earl earnestly desire our union, in that warm affection for us both of which I myself feel at all times too unworthy; and I have but little doubt that were he at once to know the truth concerning you, he would equally wish this longed-for consummation of our love, to which he is pleased to accord so full a sympathy. And the special joy which, in God's good providence, we trust your father may live to see through this our marriage, is this--that, subject to your consent, I have faithfully promised your mother that in the glad event of our being blessed by God with a son, he shall take the name of Bryn Afon, and so, should our lives and his be spared, may hereafter, free from the curse of your forefathers, carry on under fairer conditions the once-honoured name so nearly brought to an untimely end, and build up the ancient house, now crumbling to dust beneath Ap Gryffyth's curse, to take its former place among the noble houses of our principality. So may I be enabled, God willing, to wipe off, as in childhood I vowed I would strain every nerve to do, that stain, which, through the malediction of my own ancestor, has clung to so many long generations of yours! Have I done right, sweet wife that is to be, to make such promise?"