Then with one wild shriek she suddenly threw up her arms and fell back dead. How long Shanno lay there stunned and motionless she never knew, nor how, when after what seemed to her an eternity of misery, walking with tottering feet between the two trembling and wondering farm-maidens, she at last reached Glyn Helen. There, staggering with unsteady feet to her mother's chamber, with dazed eyes and face as white as death, she terrified Lady Bryn Afon, already alarmed at her long absence, by her strange appearance, and by the wild cry with which she flung herself at her feet. Slowly, word by word, as the soft touch of her mother's fingers gradually soothed her excited nerves, she gasped out her strange tale, then wildly cried: "The truth, mother, the whole truth! I must know it! It is too late now to hide it longer from me. Tell me, mother, if you love me, whether the gipsy's tale is true! And then send men quickly to take away the poor dead body, and give it decent burial, and leave me to my misery. Tell me the tale of Ap Gryffyth's curse, and spare me nothing!" "I would have given my life itself to hide it from thee, sweet one!" said her mother in a low heart-broken voice. "Already have I given all my life's happiness so to do, and now--thus rudely has my secret been revealed to thy tender heart! Little thought I yon dead woman could have betrayed it! That she should know the truth of our sad tale I never dreamed, e'en though her daughter was its victim! Listen, my sweet Shanno; then put away from your mind the miserable tale, and rest happy as before, for God forbid that any shadow of the curse should e'er fall on this fair golden head! It is true that the Earl of Bryn Afon, who so shamefully betrayed Ap Gryffyth to his death, did so in a fit of intoxication from strong drink, by which he, the first of his race so miserably addicted to this most unhappy vice, was, alas, frequently overcome, although, when not under its influence, the bravest of soldiers and kindest and most generous of men, moreover greatly esteemed by his sovereign for his own devotion to him and for his many noble and lovable qualities.