Olwen explained. "Oh! _With_ somebody," exclaimed another cousin. "Sitting with a man from that place of yours.... In khaki, then? No; a _sailor_? Oh, how _lovely_!... How old; twenty-four--five? It must have felt just like being at the Cinema. Olwen, what _did_ he talk about?" "Asked me to marry him," Olwen replied, tranquil in the assurance that this unembellished truth would never be believed. A gale of girlish laughter broke out round the table; a clatter of feminine questions. The Welsh speaking-voice, which normally resembles the coo of the ring-dove (_vide_ a paper on "Timbre" read by a college-friend of Professor Howel-Jones), is capable of rising, in excitement, above the corncrake note of the average Saxon, to the parrot-screech of the Continental. It did so now, as the stay-at-homes cross-examined their wanderer. "No; but really?" "Do tell us what sort of a young man he was?" "Yes; come on, Olwen _fach_. We never see a young man down here; might as well describe to us what one looks like----" It was at this very moment that the young man who was passing the dining-room windows on his way to the front door caught a glimpse of clustered black heads all alike and heard a breaking wave of talk and giggling. This tide rose until it swamped the sound of his ring at the bell. Presently, without warning, there burst into the dining-room that aproned colt from the mountains who had answered the door. In an explosive whisper she announced, "Some _gent----tleman_! Some gentleman is in the drawing-room!" "Who is it?" asked the mistress. "Some gentleman wanting to see Miss S'Olwen," the little maid hissed on every "S." (A sudden quiet fell upon the party.) "Some _Captain_, or something, he say." "Of course!" shrilled Olwen's youngest cousin Llewella, in a voice that could (and did) carry easily across the hall into the drawing-room and beyond the lawn outside, "This _must_ be her _sailor_ young man!" But Olwen (rising from the tea-table with the sudden sensation of having had no tea or any other meal for about a fortnight) knew better. She was the only one at that tea-table who had not been too absorbed in talk to notice the caller passing the window. Against the dark green laurel hedge and the lavender mountains beyond she had caught the flash of gayer colour, scarlet on khaki. _Captain Ross----!_ "He's come," she thought in a whirl of happiest flurry. "What did Golden say!" Her heart seemed to stand still as she crossed the hall. On the mat she waited for one second. She must look as if absolutely nothing had happened or could happen. Then she opened the heavily-draped door and went into the drawing-room. Captain Ross had planted himself just where she had expected that he might; he was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the log fire.