dmit that their
best friend can too easily offend them. I have lost excellent clients, I
have never understood why; yet I respect the remains of their literature,
I study their language, I attend their gatherings and subscribe the
expenses; I consume Welsh mutton with relish; I enjoy the Triads, and can
come down on them with a quotation from Catwg the Wise: but it so chanced
that I trod on a kibe, and I had to pay the penalty. There's an Arabian
tale, Miss Adister, of a peaceful traveller who ate a date in the desert
and flung away the stone, which hit an invisible son of a genie in the
eye, and the poor traveller suffered for it. Well, you commit these
mortal injuries to the invisible among the Welsh. Some of them are hurt
if you call them Welsh. They scout it as the original Saxon title for
them. No, they are Cymry, Cambrians! They have forgiven the Romans. Saxon
and Norman are still their enemies. If you stir their hearts you find it
so. And, by the way, if King Edward had not trampled them into the mire
so thoroughly, we should hear of it at times even now. Instead of
penillions and englyns, there would be days for fiery triplets. Say the
worst of them, they are soundheaded. They have a ready comprehension for
great thoughts. The Princess Nikolas, I remember, had a special fondness
for the words of Catwg the Wise.'

'Adiante,' had murmured Caroline, to correct his indiscretion.

She was too late.

'Nikolas!' Mr. Adister thundered. 'Hold back that name in this house,
title and all, if you speak of my daughter. I refuse admission to it
here. She has given up my name, and she must be known by the one her
feather-brained grandmother proposed for her, to satisfy her pleasure in
a fine sound. English Christian names are my preference. I conceded
Arthur to her without difficulty. She had a voice in David, I recollect;
with very little profit to either of the boys. I had no voice in Adiante;
but I stood at my girl's baptism, and Adiante let her be. At least I
saved the girl from the addition of Arianrod. It was to have been Adiante
Arianrod. Can you credit it? Prince-pah! Nikolas? Have you a notion of
the sort of prince that makes an English lady of the best blood of
England his princess?'

The lawyer had a precise notion of the sort of prince appearing to Mr.
Adister in the person of his foreign son-in-law. Prince Nikolas had been
described to him before, with graphic touches upon the quality of the
reputation he bore