father, and I know the doom that awaits me, just as well as I know my own inability to avert it!" Lady Bryn Afon shuddered. "We will not talk on the subject," she said. "What is the good? you know your weakness, and what wife can do, to help you in struggling against it, I have ever done, and will do to the last. We will leave Bryn Afon. It is not good for you to spend much time in this o'ershadowed place. Dear," she added, laying her hand on his arm with sudden tenderness, "you have indeed been good to me, in yielding to my whim, and in twice burying yourself here with me, that I might gratify it. I will leave the castle when you will, and we will travel again--what you please." "I have a thought, Guinevere," said the earl, recovering his lightness of manner in his usual thoughtless fashion. "I have thought many times of late that you would be less lonely if you had some young companion. Why should we not adopt a child, since we have none of our own? I am right marvellously taken with yon fair child below--Little Miss Primrose, who has beauty, grace, and dignity enough, I trow, to be herself heiress of the ancient house of Bryn Afon! What say you, sweet wife? Why should we not adopt her, an Jack the boatman is willing to give her up? She is not his own, and therefore he need not shrink aghast from such a proposition, though she has verily crept deep down, I fear, into his rough but honest old heart! It would be a pleasing new interest in life for you, and I must needs confess that such a little golden-haired fairy would even perchance make Bryn Afon itself an endurable residence."