Part 62 (2/2)

'I mean when you breakfasted with the Prince of the Mist. I was the Prince of the Mist, dear.'

She gave me a puzzled look which scared while it warned me. How cruel it seemed of Sinfi, who had planned this meeting, not to have told me how much and how little Winnie knew of the past.

'You know nothing about the Prince of the Mist except what I told you on Raxton sands,' she said. 'But you have been very ill; you will be well now.'

'Yes,' I said; 'I have found the life I had lost, and these dreams of mine will soon pa.s.s.'

As the conversation went on I began to see that she remembered our meetings on the sands--remembered everything up to a certain point.

What was that point? This was the question that kept me on tenterhooks.

Every word she uttered, however, shed light into my mind, and served as a warning that I must feel my way cautiously. It was evident to me that in some unaccountable way Sinfi at some time after she left me at Beddgelert had discovered that Winnie was not really dead, and had brought her back to me--brought her back to me restored in mind, but with all memory of what had pa.s.sed during her dementia erased from her consciousness. Everything depended now upon my learning how much of her past she did remember. A single ill-judged word of mine--a single false move--might ruin all, and bring back the life of misery which I seemed at last to have left behind me.

VI

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have not yet told me how you came here. You have not yet told me how it is that you meet me on Snowdon--meet me in this wonderful way.'

'Oh,' said she with a smile, 'Badoura has been a mere puppet in the play. She had no idea she was going to meet her prince. Sinfi was suddenly seized with a desire that she and I should come back, and visit the dear old places we knew together. I was nothing loth, as you may imagine, but I could not understand what had made her set her heart upon it. When we reached Carnarvons.h.i.+re I found that Sinfi's people were all encamped near to Bettws y Coed, and we went and stayed there. We visited all the places in the neighbourhood that were a.s.sociated with her childhood and mine.'

'You went to Fairy Glen?' I said.

'Yes; we went there the night before last and saw it in the moonlight.'

'I was there, and I saw you.'

'Ah! Then the man sitting on the boulder at the bottom was you! How wonderful! Sinfi was there on the step round the corner; she must have seen you. I know now why she suddenly hurried me away. She had told me that she wanted to see the Glen by moonlight'

'Then you did not know that you would meet me here?'

'My dear Henry, do you suppose that if I had known, I could have been induced to take part in anything so theatrical? When I saw you standing here my amazement and joy were so great that I forgot the strange way in which I stood exhibited.'

I felt that the longer she chatted about such matters as these the more opportunities I should get of learning how much and how little she knew of her own story, so I said,

'But tell me how Sinfi contrived to trick you.'

'Well, this morning was the time fixed for our visiting Llyn Coblynau, as we call Knockers' Lynn, which was my favourite place as a child. We were to see it when the colours of the morning were upon it. Then we were to go right to the top of Snowdon and take a mid-day meal at the hut there, and in the evening go down to Llanberis and sleep there. To-morrow morning we were to go to dear old Carnarvon and see again the beloved sea. I find now that her plan was to bring you and me together in this sensational way.'

'Will she join us?' I asked.

'I know no more than you what will be Sinfi's next whim. At the last moment yesterday I was surprised to find that I was not to come with her here, as she was not to sleep in the camp last night because she had promised to see a friend at Capel Curig. And now, shall I tell you how she inveigled me into taking my part in this Snowdon play she was getting up? She told me that she had the greatest wish to discover how the ”Knockers' echoes,” as they are called, would sound if, in the early morning, she were to play her crwth in one spot and I were to answer it from another spot with a verse of a Welsh song.

It seemed a pretty idea, and it was agreed that when I reached the llyn I was to go round it to the opening at the east, pa.s.s through the crevice, and wait there till I heard her crwth.'

'Well, Winnie, I must say that the way in which our Gypsy friend manipulated you, and the way in which she manipulated me, shows a method that would have done credit to any madness.'

'You? How did she trick you?'

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