I had written instantly to the kind old man on my return to camp, and this proved to be the answer by the first mail. On opening the packet I found a letter, and a cigar-case beautifully worked in beads of the regimental colours, red, blue, and gold, with _my_ initials on one side, and those of Winifred Lloyd on the _other_. Poor Phil Caradoc looked wistfully at the work her delicate hands had so evidently wrought--so wistfully that, but for the ungallantry of the proceeding, I should have presented the case to him. However, he had the simple gratification of holding it, while I read the letter of Sir Madoc, and did so aloud, as being of equal interest to us both. It was full of such warm expressions of joy for my safety and of regard for me personally, that I own they moved me; but some passages proved a little mysterious and perplexing. "Need I repeat to you, my dear Harry, how the receipt of your letter caused every heart in the Court to rejoice--that of Winny especially? She is more impressionable than Dora, less volatile, and I have now learned _why_ the poor girl refused Sir Watkins, and, as I understand, another." "That is me," said Phil, parenthetically. "But of that unexpected refusal of Sir Watkins Vaughan nothing can be said here." "What on earth can he mean!" said I, looking up; "perhaps she has some lingering compunction about you, Phil." "If so, she might have sent the cigar-case to me--or something else; just to square matters, as it were." Remembering my old suspicions and fears--they were fears _then_--as I drove away from Craigaderyn for Chester, I read the letter in haste, and with dread of what it might contain or reveal; as I would not for worlds have inflicted a mortification, however slight, on my dear friend Caradoc, who gnawed the ends of his moustache at the following: "Young Sir Watkins had been most attentive to Winny during the past season in town--that gay London season, which, notwithstanding the war, was quite as brilliant as usual; when every one had come back from the Scotch moors, from Ben Nevis, Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and everywhere else that the roving Englishman is wont to frequent, to kill game, or time, or himself, as it sometimes happens. But Winny won't listen to him, and I think he is turning his attention to Dora, though whether or not the girl--who has another adorer, in the shape of a long-legged Plunger with parted hair and a lisp--only laughs at him, I can't make out. "Tell Caradoc, Gwynne, and other true-hearted Cymri in the Welsh Fusileers, that when in London I attended more than one meeting, inaugurating a movement to secure for Wales judges and counsel who shall speak Welsh, and Welsh only. The meetings were failures, and the d--d Sassenachs only laughed at us; but from such injustice, _Gwared ni Argylywd daionus!_[5] say I.