ttling woman mean about the dress in which she had at first seen
me? Was the dress in which she had first seen me so squalid that it
had affected her simple imagination? What had become of me after I
had sunk down on Raxton sands, and why was I left neglected by every
one? I knew you were ill after the landslip, but Mr. D'Arcy had just
told me that you had since been well enough to go to Wales and
afterwards to Japan.

'I put on the dress and soon followed her. When I reached the
tapestried room there was Mr. D'Arcy talking to her in a voice so
gentle, tender, and caressing, that it seemed impossible the rough
voice I had heard bellowing through the passage could have come from
the same mouth, and Mrs. Titwing was looking into his face with the
delighted smile of a child who was being forgiven by its father for
some trifling offence. As I stood and looked at them I said to
myself, "Truly I am in a land of wonders."'

VI

'Mr. D'Arcy and I,' said Winifred, 'went out of the house at the
back, walked across a roughly paved stable-yard, and passed through a
gate and entered a meadow. Then we walked along a stream about as
wide as one of our Welsh brooks, but I found it to be a backwater
connected with a river. For some time neither of us spoke a word. He
seemed lost in thought, and my mind was busy with what I intended to
say to him, for I was fully determined to get some light thrown upon
the mystery.

'When we reached the river bank we turned towards the left, and
walked until we reached a weir, and there we sat down upon a fallen
willow tree, the inside of which was all touchwood. Then he said,

'"You are silent, Miss Wynne."

'"And you are silent," I said.

'"My silence is easily explained," he said. "I was waiting to hear
some remark fall from you as to these meadows and the river, which
you have seen so often."

'"Which I see now for the first time, you mean."

'"Miss Wynne," he said, looking earnestly in my face, "you and I have
taken this walk together nearly every day for months."

'"That," I said, "is--is quite impossible."

'"It is true," he said. And then again we sat silent.

'Then I said to him with great firmness, "Mr. D'Arcy, I'm only a
peasant girl, but I'm Welsh; I have faith in you, faith in your
goodness and faith in your kindness to me; but I must insist upon
knowing how I came here, and how you and I were brought together."

'He smiled, and said, "I was right in thinking that your fa