er from me if I could only
get near her.

I put my thumb upon the old-fashioned latch, and found that the door
was not locked. It yielded to my touch, and with a throbbing of every
pulse, I pushed it open and looked in.

In front of me rose a staircase, steep and narrow. There was
sufficient evening light to enable me to see up the staircase, and to
distinguish two black bedroom doors, now closed, on the landing. I
stood on the wet threshold till my nerves grew calmer. On my right
and on my left the doors of the two rooms on the ground floor were
open. I could see that the one on my left was stripped of furniture.

I entered the room on my right--a low room of some considerable
length, with heavy beams across the ceiling, which in that light
seemed black. Two or three chairs and a table were in it. There was a
brisk fire, and over it a tea-kettle of the kind much favoured by
Gypsies, as I afterwards learnt. There was no grate, but an open
hearth, exactly like the one in Wynne's cottage, where Winifred and I
used to stand in summer evenings to see the sky, and the stars
twinkling above the great sooty throat of the open chimney. I now
perceived the crwth and bow upon the table. Sinfi Lovell had
evidently been here since we parted. On the walls hung a few of those
highly coloured prints of Scriptural subjects which, at one time,
used to be seen in English farm-houses, and are still the only works
of art with the Welsh peasants and a few well-to-do Welsh Gypsies who
would emulate Gorgio tastes.

On the left-hand side of the room was an arched recess, in which, no
doubt, had stood at one time a sideboard, or some such piece of
furniture. There was no occupant of the room, however, and I grew
calmer as I stood before the fire, which drew from my wet clothes a
cloud of steam. The ruddy fingers of the fire-gleam playing upon the
walls made the colours of the pictures seem bright as the tints of
stained glass. The pathetic message of those flickering rays flowed
into my soul. The red mantle of the Prodigal Son, in which he was
feeding the swine, shone as though it had been soaked in sorrow and
blood-red sin. The house was apparently empty; the tension of my
passion became for the first time relaxed, and I passed into a
strange mood of pathos, dreamy, but yet acute, in which Winifred's
fate, and my mother's harshness, and my father's scarred breast,
seemed all a mingled mystery of reminiscent pain.

I had not stood more t