"'Oh, quite well,' sez I; 'and Gwladys is as ugly as ever.'"
Gwladys smiled pensively.
"'How is it you never come up to see us at Mwntseison?' sez I; and he didn't answer, but looked up after the smoke to the chimney."
A few evenings after this conversation Gwladys took her way over the cliffs which stretched at the back of the sail-shed towards the valley of the Berwen. She was bent on the same kindly errand that had frequently taken Mari Vone on this path, namely, to gather ferns for Peggi Pentraeth's donkey. She never went more than half-way to Traeth Berwen, partly shrinking from passing the grassy mound on which her friend had breathed her last, alone and unattended, and, moreover, a little proud reserve withheld her footsteps.
If she went further than half-way, Berwen mill would be in sight, and perhaps she might be seen from the mill. Not for worlds will a well-brought-up Welsh girl give her lover a shadow of reason to think that she is seeking him. She is not slow to respond to advances on his part, but will never make any of her own. So she turned down a cleft in the cliffs, and gathered her baich[[3]] of green and golden bracken, and, tying it into shape with a strong cord, sat down upon it for a moment to watch the setting sun before she slung it on her back.
Behind her the rounded hills rose brown and flushed in the sunset light; around her the rushes whispered in the evening breeze, the green sward glowed in the sun's last rays, and every nodding flower caught its crimson light. The sea murmured on the rocks below, the floating sea-gulls still rose and fell on the heaving waters, and though it was late autumn, a calm, serene beauty brooded over land and sea, as though summer had returned with a last lingering good-bye. Gwladys sat and watched the fading tints, filled with tender memories of the past, not unmixed with an awakening flood of hope in the future; not untinged, too, with a feeling of resentment against Ivor, who had been very chary of his visits to Mwntseison of late. She had been thankful to him at first for his avoidance of her; it spared her so much embarrassment. But latterly, the longing to see him again had grown upon her, and the old haunting hunger for his love was again rising within her—not that it had ever died, nor even slept, but that it had been repressed and buried under the sad events through which she had passed. But now she was evidently loosening the bonds which had kept it in check, for it rose again within her, and threatened once more to flow in upon her in waves of unrest. True, she had sometimes met her old lover on the way to and from chapel, or market, or fair, but never alone, and always Ivor had been calm and undemonstrative.
"Had he forgotten her?" she wondered. "Had the years brought him submission and indifference. She was still so young—only twenty-three. It was no wonder if that pensive curve of the lips and that moisture in the brown eyes betokened a little wistful rebelling against fate. Why! why should she not be happy? Why did Ivor so persistently avoid her?" and so lost was she in her own thoughts, that she did not hear a footstep which passed along the path above her.
It was Ivor Parry, sauntering up from the mill with the intention of paying one of his infrequent visits to Mwntseison. He had longed latterly more and more for a sight of Gwladys, and he chafed under the restraints which he had placed upon himself, and the proprieties of village life which kept them apart.
But surely here she was close beside him! every barrier removed from his path! no moral restraint to be fought with, as of old! nothing to prevent their intercourse! The suddenness and greatness of the thought took his breath away, and though, with a man's impetuosity, he never hesitated to grasp the opportunity, still the strong man trembled as he approached the unconscious girl.
"Gwladys!" he said at last, and in a moment she had started to her feet, the rich blood surging over neck, cheek, and brow.