d
like that. Having got myself under control, I said,

'Winifred, it is not my doing; it is Fate's doing that we meet here
on this night, and that I am driven to say here what I had as a
schoolboy sworn should be said whenever we should meet again.'

'I think,' said Winifred, pulling herself up with the dignity of a
queen, 'that if you have anything important to say to me it had
better be at a more seasonable time than at this hour of night, and
at a more seasonable place than on these sands.'

'No, Winifred,' said I, 'the time is _now_, and the place is
here--here on this very spot where, once on a time, you said
"certumly" when a little lover asked your hand. It is now and here,
Winifred, that I will say what I have to say.'

'And what is that, sir?' said Winifred, much perplexed and disturbed.

'I have to say, Winifred, that the man does not live and never _has_
lived,' said I, with suppressed vehemence, who loved a woman as I
love you.'

Oh, sir! oh, Henry!' returned Winifred, trembling, then standing
still and whiter than the moon. 'And the reason why no man has ever
loved a woman as I love you, Winifred, is because your match, or
anything like your match, has never trod the earth before.'

'Oh, Henry, my dear Henry! you _must_ not say such things to me, your
poor Winifred.'

'But that isn't all that I swore I'd say to you, Winifred.'

'Don't say any more--not to-night, not to-night.'

'What I swore I would ask you, Winifred, is this: Will you be Henry's
wife?'

She gave one hysterical sob, and swayed till she nearly fell on the
sand, and said, while her face shone like a pearl,

'Henry's wife!'

She recovered herself and stood and looked at me; her lips moved, but
I waited in vain--waited in a fever of expectation--for her answer.
None came. I gazed into her eyes, but they now seemed rilled with
visions--visions of the great race to which she belonged--visions in
which her English lover had no place. Suddenly, and for the first
time, I felt that she who had inspired within me this all-conquering
passion, though the penniless child of a drunken organist, was a
daughter of Snowdon--a representative of the Cymric race that was
once so mighty, and is still more romantic in its associations than
all others. Already in the little talk I had had with her I began to
guess what I realised before the evening was over, that owing to the
influence of the English lady, Miss Dalrymple, who had lodged at the
co