ptured her. The rest you know. But now,
brother, I am jealous for my dear friend. She has expressed fear that,
in her great pity for you, she may be thought to have acted an unwomanly
part, and that you will perhaps despise her."

"Unwomanly! despise!" exclaimed Bladud in amazement. "Hafrydda, do you
regard me as a monster of ingratitude?"

"Nay, brother, that do I not. I think that you could never despise one
who has felt such genuine pity for you as to risk and endure so much."

"Hafrydda, do you think there is no stronger feeling than pity for me in
the heart of Branwen?" asked Bladud in a subdued, earnest voice.

"That you must find out for yourself, brother," answered the princess.
"Yet after all, if you are only fond of Cormac, what matters the feeling
that may be in the heart of Branwen? Are you in love with her already,
Bladud, after so short an acquaintance?"

"In love with her!" exclaimed the prince. "There is no Cormac. There
is but one woman in the wide world now--"

"That is not complimentary to your mother and myself, I fear,"
interrupted his sister.

"But," continued the prince, paying no regard to the interruption, "is
there any chance--any hope--of--of--something stronger than pity being
in her heart?"

"I say again, ask that of herself, Bladud; but now I think of it," added
the princess, leaping up in haste, "I am almost too late to keep an
appointment with Dromas!"

She went out hurriedly, and the prince, full of new-born hopes mingled
with depressing anxieties, went away into the neighbouring woods to
meditate--for, in the haste of her departure, Hafrydda had neglected to
tell him where Branwen was to be found, and he shrank from mentioning
her name to any one else.

But accident--as we call it--sometimes brings about what the most
laboured design fails to accomplish.

Owing to a feeling of anxiety which she could not shake off, Branwen had
gone out that evening to cool her fevered brow in the woods, just a few
minutes before the prince entered them. It was a strange coincidence;
but are not all coincidences strange?

Seating herself on a fallen tree she cast up her eyes towards the sky
where a solitary star, like a beacon of hope, was beginning to twinkle.
She had not been there more than a few minutes when a rustle in the
neighbouring thicket startled her. Almost before she had time to look
round the prince stood before her. She trembled, for now she felt that
the decisive