Then Master Taylor, laying a hand on the head of each of his beloved friends, and uttering a solemn benediction, pointed presently to the shining stream beneath their feet, and in his beautiful musical utterance said in low-spoken tones; "Let our love be firm, constant, and inseparable, not coming and returning like the tide, but descending like a never-failing river, ever running into the ocean of divine excellency, passing on in the channels of duty and a constant obedience, and never ceasing to be what it is till it comes to be what it desires to be; still being a river till it be turned into sea and vastness, even the immensity of a blessed eternity."* * Jeremy Taylor. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE WEDDING-DAY. "My rose, I gather for the breast of God." --ROBERT BROWNING. "I go to prove my soul I see my prey as birds their trackless way: I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first I ask not; but unless God send his hail, Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, In some time, His good time, I shall arrive; He guides me and the bird. In His good time!" --ROBERT BROWNING. While Shanno was led by her mother to that first interview with the earl as her acknowledged father, to which she had so long looked forward in the bright days first following her knowledge of her own new position, but during the last sad weeks had dreaded with pain and shrinking not less than her former joy, Percival Vere, ere proceeding to the house of Master Rhys, where he had promised to spend the night, and to unfold to himself and to Jack the boatman the melancholy tale of his own and Shanno's unlooked-for sufferings, found his way to the laboratory, dreading, yet craving to see the physician, whose sympathies would, he well knew, have been strongly excited by the events of the last few weeks. No answer being vouchsafed to his knock, he gently opened the door and entered the apartment, whence he had not long since gone forth strong in his new-found confidence of joy and hope. Before the portrait of the lovely, ill-starred Lady Gwendolen, Rhiwallon lay, prostrate and motionless, one hand still holding the stem of the phial in which he had triumphantly shown to Percival his precious elixir at their last interview in the laboratory, while around him lay the fragments of the phial itself, broken to shivers, its contents in a pool upon the floor. The chaplain gently knelt down beside him and spoke his name, and as he did so he saw, crushed within the thin fingers of his other hand, the letter he had but just received from Lady Bryn Afon, acquainting him with those circumstances which had followed his own return from Glyn Melen to the castle, of her sad discovery and irrevocable vow.