She had chosen her place of refuge, and he would take her there.
“Gryphynshold,” he slowly repeated, when she had named the selected point of destination. “What a savage and gloomy name, dear! Where is that?”
“The name is not more gloomy and savage than the place, I fear. It is situated in the extreme southwestern part of Virginia, on or near the point of juncture with North Carolina and Tennessee. It is said to be the most ancient building in all that region of country; it was erected in a gorge of the Iron Mountains by an eccentric and misanthropical Welshman named Dyvyd-ap-Gryphyn, said by some annalists to have been an outlaw in his own country and a refugee in this. However that might have been, or whether he had any legal right to the land or not, there, in the most terrific yawning abyss of the mountain range, he built a rude stronghold of heavy rock and ponderous timber, and called it Gryphynshold; and there he lived, supporting himself by hunting and fishing, like any other savage denizen of the wilderness, and there at length he married an Indian girl of the Cherokee tribe. From that marriage sprang the race of Gryphyns—a proud, surly, ferocious race of men, the bane of each other, and the terror of their neighborhood.”
“It is to be devoutly hoped that they were not a very numerous tribe,” said David Lindsay.
“No. I have heard Aunt Agrippina say that there was never more than one child born of any marriage, and that was always a son. Strange, wasn’t it, from generation to generation, only one son to succeed his father?”
“Very strange; yet it precluded all possibility of law-suits among the heirs. But how came this ill-omened property into your father’s hands, my dear little lady?” inquired David Lindsay, in a playful tone, assumed to hide the heartache that was torturing him.
“Oh, it was a dreadful, dreadful story. I do not know the details of it. But Mr. Dyvyd Gryphyn, the last descendant of the Welsh outlaw who founded the family, seems to have been a demon in human form, more haughty, surly, cruel and furious than any of his evil predecessors, yet withal as demoniacally beautiful and fascinating as Lucifer, Son of the Morning. After the death of his father, who was killed in a tavern broil, and of his mother, who dropped dead of heart disease on hearing the news—for all these handsome and ferocious demons seemed to have been fondly loved by their unfortunate wives—Dyvyd Gryphyn left Gryphynshold on a tour of Europe. After an absence of three years he returned home, bringing with him a young woman, said to have been fairer than the fairest lily, more blooming than the rosiest rose. He loved her with the surly, jealous, cruel love of his nature and the nature of his fathers, which seems to be not so much love as a devouring and consuming fire, the curse and ruin of all upon whom it chanced to fall. And she loved him with that fatality of devotion which was the doom of all the women ever chosen by the ill men of the race. She was content to bury herself with him in that savage solitude, remote from all human kind; yet he did not seclude himself, but rode forth to distant towns and villages, and remained away for days and weeks together. Sometimes he would bring a party of men home with him, and they would hunt or fish all day, and carouse all night. But he never let any of them see his hidden beauty, who lived as isolated in her dreary prison as any enchanted princess in a fairy castle, until one night, in the midst of a midnight orgie, when his reckless companions were all mad with drink, and he himself was maddest of all, he sent and summoned her to the feast. The poor thing was not a Queen Vashti, so she obeyed the drunken mandate, and came down. I do not know what happened there—what she was forced to see and bear and hear—but that she was grieved, shocked and terrified beyond all endurance is certain, for as soon as she could break away and escape from the fiendish crew, she fled to the top of the house and hid herself, in a state of delirious terror.”
Gloria paused and shuddered.
“What became of the poor young woman?” inquired David Lindsay.
“I do not know. No one knows what finally became of her. The party of revellers broke up the next morning and Dyvyd Gryphyn rode with them to the next town and remained absent for a day, during which the poor little soul at home grew quieter.”