"Astounding!" said Gwynne Ellis, "I will not believe it. It is a moral impossibility that that loving nature and candid mind, could ever so change in their characteristics, as to refuse to listen to reason, and that from the lips of one whom she loved so passionately, as she did you." "That is my feeling," said Cardo, "but alas! I have her own words to assure me of the bitter truth. 'If I ever loved you,' she said, 'I have ceased to do so, and I feel no more love for you now, than I do for yonder ploughman.' In fact, Ellis, I could not realise while I was speaking to her that she was the same girl. It was Valmai's lovely outward form, indeed, but the spirit within her seemed changed. Are such things possible?" Ellis puffed away in silence for some seconds before he replied: "Anything--everything is possible now-a-days; there is such a thing as hypnotism, thought transference--obsession--what will you? And any of these things I will believe sooner, than that Valmai Wynne can have changed. Cheer up, old fellow! I was born to pilot you through your love affairs, and now here's a step towards it." And from a drawer in his escritoire he drew out an ordnance map of the county of Monmouth. "Now, let me see, where lies this wonderful place, Carne Hall, did you call it? I thought so; here it is within two miles of my new church. In a month I shall be installed into that 'living,' and my first duty when I get there shall be to find out your wife, Cardo, and to set you right in her estimation." "Never," said Cardo; "she has encased herself in armour of cold and haughty reserve, which not even your persuasive and cordial manners will break through." "Time will show; I have a firm conviction, that I shall set things straight for you, so cheer up my friend, and await what the wonderful Gwynne Ellis can do for you. But you look very tired." "Yes, I will go to bed," said Cardo. "And to-morrow we'll have a tramp round the parish, and visit some of the old fogies in their cottage. A mongrel sort, neither Welsh nor English; not so interesting as your queer-looking old people down at Abersethin. Good-night." CHAPTER XIX. THE MEREDITHS