"Well, I'm coming to-morrow, whatever, Mishteer," said Gwladys.
"Halt, halt!" said Hugh, laughing; "you must drop that word now. Mishteer, indeed! Remember I will fine thee a kiss for every time thou call'st me that!"
"I will try, indeed; but 'twill be hard at first."
"Oh, I won't be very angry if thou fail'st to remember sometimes," answered Hugh, and, as Nani's shadow darkened the door again, he returned to his less warm, but still cordial, manner, and soon rose to go.
"Nos da to you both!" he said, and, with a loving look towards Gwladys, which he was careful Nani should not see, he left the house.
Meanwhile Ivor had waited on the darkened shore until the sun had long set, and the moon, now at her full, looked down upon the shimmering bay.
The tide had turned, and still Gwladys had not come; and while he waited there in the shadow of the cliff, he pondered bitterly on Nani's words, and sought in vain for any loophole for hope that the news was not true, and that he should yet find Gwladys free and unfettered.
"Fool! fool!" he said; "to think I could safely loiter on the path of love! to see the answer to my own heart gradually coming into those brown eyes! That's what I waited for; but caton pawb! how could I expect such happiness? I have never seen a sign of that love in her which fills my heart. Sometimes, indeed,"—and his troubled face took a tender, faraway look—"sometimes I have seen her eyes droop, and her blushes come when I have spoken to her, and then I thought perhaps she cared a little for me, for she is not like some girls—Gwen or Ana, now. 'Twas not far to seek for their smiles—no, nor their kisses either! But Gwladys! I was afraid even to touch her, lest she should fly away like a bird!" and he groaned aloud in his trouble, and confessed to himself that the darkest and direst misfortune that could befall him was casting its shadow on his path—nay, had already caught and overwhelmed him. Had his rival been anyone else, he could have fought against his fate—yes, fought, and perhaps conquered! But the Mishteer! his friend! his master! the man whom, of all others, he held in such high esteem. No! the thought was unbearable. Life was not made to hold such bitterness for him! But, alas! life does hold out to us sometimes a cup of so much bitterness that imagination even would hesitate to picture it as a possible event in our experience. We drink it to the dregs, and we survive it.
A step on the pebbles, and Gwladys had at last appeared, and Ivor watched her as she picked her way between the boulders, unconscious of his presence. Oh, how lovely she looked, her brown hair tossed by the soft night breeze, the moon shining full upon the clear brown eyes, and the coral of her lips! and what the moonlight failed to reveal was only too plainly pictured on his memory. She held her two hands on her bosom, grasping the strap of her creel, and she rather bent her head over them as she drew near. She did not see Ivor until she was close upon him, and for a moment stood perfectly still.
"Gwladys!" was all he could say at first, and his voice was so altered, so hoarse, that she stood up straight before him, and looked in astonishment in his face, while she answered, in a startled tone: