Mr. Percy Aylwin, it will be remembered, having
been smitten by the charms of a certain Rhona Boswell, actually set
up a tent with the Gypsies; and now Mr. Henry Aylwin, of Raxton Hall
(who, by the bye, has never been seen in that neighbourhood since the
great landslip), is said to be following a good example by living in
Wales with a Gypsy wife, but whether the wedding took place at St.
George's, Hanover Square, or in simpler fashion in an encampment of
Little Egypt, we do not know.'
One day in the bungalow, when I was reading the copious marginalia
with which my father had furnished his own copy of _The Veiled
Queen_, I came upon a passage which so completely carried my mind
back to the night of our betrothal that I heard as plainly as I had
then heard Winnie's words at the door of her father's cottage:
'I should have to come in the winds and play around you in the woods.
I should have to peep over the clouds and watch you. I should have
to follow you about wherever you went. I should have to beset you
till you said: "Bother Winnie, I wish she'd keep in heaven!"'
The written words of my father that had worked this magical effect
upon me were these:
'But after months of these lonely wanderings in Graylingham Wood and
along the sands, not even the reshaping power of memory would suffice
to appease my longing; a new hope, wild as new, was breaking in upon
my soul, dim and yet golden, like the sun struggling through a
sea-fog.
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