"I don't think you need have shaken hands with him, child; however, it was very nice of you, and I've no doubt it will please the young man very much. I declare he looks like a gentleman."
"Yes; pommy word I don't know what's the world coming to!"
"Very nice people those Vaughans, I should think," said Gwilym Morris, as he and Will tramped homewards in the evening.
"H'm! yes," said Will; "I daresay they thought they were honouring me very much by their notice; but, mind you, Gwilym, in a few years I'll show them I can hold up my head with any of them."
"Will," said Gwilym, after a pause, "I am afraid for you, lad; I am afraid of what the world will make of you. At Garthowen, with nothing but the simple country ways around us, we escape many temptations; but once we enter the world outside, even here in the market it reaches us, that subtle insidious glamour which incites us, not to become what we ought to be, but to appear different to what we are in reality."
"I can't follow you," said Will. "I suppose it is every man's duty to try and get on as far as he can in the path of life which he has chosen. I have chosen mine, and I don't mean to leave a stone unturned which may help me on. Yon can't blame me for that, Gwilym."
"No, no! I suppose not; and yet--and yet--"
"You may get to the very top of the ladder, and then find it has not been leaning against the right wall. That would be a poor success, Will."
"Well, well!" he said, as they entered the farmyard, "what's the matter with you to-night? You wait a few years, give me only a chance, and you'll be proud of your old pupil."
When they had separated, Gwilym looked after him thoughtfully.
It was late in the evening when Morva made her way to the cliffs to meet her lover. The moor was bathed in a flood of silver moonlight, the sea below was lighted up by the same serene effulgence, and the silence of night was only broken by the trickle of the mill stream down in the valley, the barking of the dogs on the distant farms, and the secret scurry of a rabbit under the furze bushes.
As she neared the edge of the cliff, the peace and beauty of the scene impressed her eye but did not reach her heart, which was beating with a strange unrest.