"To me all that you do is right, my beloved," answered Primrose, her eyes filling with tears of rare love and devotion, "and it is a right noble promise you have made. Sweet mother, all shall be as you and my affianced husband desire and know to be wise and good for me; and since you do assure me I may look for my father's blessing on my marriage morning, I am well content, and will ask no more, nor ever seek to know the nature of this dread curse, which has caused you so sorely to suffer, in order that it might be averted from me, save at my husband's and your own bidding." So, that sweet summer holiday ended, the lovers parted on the green banks of the softly murmuring Gwynnon, beneath the boatman's bridge, one sunny morning; and Lady Bryn Afon, commending her child for the first time with her own lips into her father's care, took her journey, in her chaplain's charge, to London, there to rejoin her husband, at length able, in the depths of her heart, to rejoice that her sufferings had surely not been in vain. Percival Vere, on rejoining Lord Bryn Afon in town, made him as soon as possible acquainted with his betrothal to the Fair Maid of Gwynnon, and the two frequently conversed together on the subject of her perfections, which topic offered a certain relief to her lover's loneliness of spirit in his absence from her, and was also to the earl, who had ever taken a lively interest in her fortunes, one of so much interest, that he bade his chaplain to make no doubt of his being himself present in person to witness the happy event whensoever it might come to pass. "'Twas a strangely opportune decision I made to appoint you as successor to good old Master Rhys of Cwmfelin!" he remarked one day, as they were conversing together after the evening meal; "for such has long been my intention, so soon as our old friend should carry out his contemplated resignation, apart from my desire to see you happily wedded to her whom my mind had chosen as a fitting helpmeet for your labours. 'Tis rarely we find our dreams verified, but when I see you and your fair bride housed beneath the walls of yon ancient monastery, I shall feel a sense of gratification in having realised this one of my own! And as for you, can you but have free scope for your own wild imaginings as to the total abolition of strong beverages throughout the length and breadth of Wales, beginning, as you so eagerly desire, with my own poor village and ill-starred domains, you will, I doubt not, account yourself to be fulfilling a far higher destiny than were I to seek for you favour in high places and a pulpit here in our metropolis, whence you might enthral thousands with your eloquence! Come now, I have but to whisper in the king's ear, and your friend Jeremy in the ear of Archbishop Laud, and you shall have such a sphere appointed you, as I verily confess, would rather befit your learning and powers of oratory than yon tiny village amid the wild Welsh hills!"