She sang Y Gelynen, explaining that it was in praise of the holly bush; her voice was small, pure and sweet, and prettily suited to the rippling, trilling refrain of the song. She did not sing in any way as well as Monica, but there was an individual quality and a justness of musical feeling about her singing which gave it charm. From Revelstoke’s expression as he played it was plain that he did not like the accompaniment, and by the fourth verse he had begun to guy it, so slightly that only Monica noticed.

Next Ceinwen sang a Christmas carol, Ar Gyfer Heddiw Bore, and this time he treated the accompaniment to please himself. Ceinwen was put off by his improvisation; she was a good singer, but she was not up to that. And it was clear to Monica that Revelstoke’s treatment of the theme was clever but unsympathetic; he was not helping the singer, he was showing off. The colour had left Ceinwen’s cheeks, and her green eyes seemed to darken.

The squire beat time to the Welsh songs with his hand, and nodded from time to time to show that, while he might not understand the words, he was sure they were full of Welsh Christmas cheer.

“The last song I’ll sing is a particularly fine one,” said Ceinwen; “it is called Hiraeth.”

“Aren’t you going to tell us about it?” asked Ripon. “Please do. This is wonderful, really it is. I’m living in a novel by Peacock,” he said, beaming at the squire, who accepted the remark with a smile, having learned by now that it was a compliment.

“It is about the longing for what is unattainable, which is called ‘hiraeth’ in Welsh. The singer is someone very old, who begs the wise and learned men of the earth to say where hiraeth comes from; all the treasures of the earth perish, gold, silver, rich fabrics and all the delights of life, but hiraeth is undying; there is no escape from it even in sleep; who weaves this web of hiraeth?”

“Splendid,” said Ripon; “real Celtic magic.”

“Oh I don’t know,” said Revelstoke. The Welsh make a fuss about their hiraeth as if they’d invented it; it’s common to all small, disappointed, frustrated nations. The Jews have used it as their principal artistic stock-in-trade for two thousand years. It’s the old hankering to get back to the womb, where everything was snug. Whimpering stuff.”

“Now that you’ve made it seem so delightful, I’ll sing it,” said Ceinwen.

The accompaniment was a simple but effective succession of chords, played in harp-like style, against which the tune appeared almost as declamation. Revelstoke played it thus for the first verse, and then he began to experiment; his arpeggios whined, they groaned, they shivered piteously. It was cruel caricature of the deep feeling of the words and the simple beauty of the air, and it made Monica’s flesh creep with embarrassment. Ripon, though no musician, could understand the import of this right enough, and even the Hopkin-Griffiths knew that all was not well.

What will she do, thought Monica. He’ll break her down. There’ll be tears in a minute, and what had I better do?

Ceinwen was not the weeping sort. She finished the song, and, as Revelstoke was bringing his accompaniment to a close in a series of sour chromatic progressions she whipped off her left shoe and hit him over the head with it. Then she struck at his hands again and again, bringing from the old Broadwood yelps and twanglings which mingled with his extravagant and astonishing curses.

There was an alarming scene, in which everybody accused and nobody apologized. There was a general withdrawal to bedrooms, and some slamming of doors. But to the amazement of Monica and Ripon everyone turned up at dinner apparently in excellent spirits, and Ceinwen and Giles pulled a cracker together with that extra, clean-hearted goodwill which is seen in people who have had a thoroughly satisfactory quarrel.

After dinner they rolled up the rug in the drawingroom, the maids and outside men came in, and there was dancing to the gramophone.

“The Welsh are rather a hot-tempered race,” said Revelstoke to Monica, as they danced.

And that was all that was ever said about it.

The week which followed was passed in walks, visits to neighbouring country-houses, and motor jaunts to special places of beauty, including a day of great glory when the young people drove through Gwalia Deserta and explored the gorge at Devil’s Bridge; Monica sat in the front seat of the car with Revelstoke all that day. She met several Welsh people, and was astonished by the vivacity and genial spite which they brought to social conversation, and which was unlike anything she had experienced among the people of England. But Monica was more astonished by herself than by anything external. She began to talk about her family; she was often alarmed by what she said, for she found that she was weaving a legend around the Galls. The Welsh had a national character, or at least they were strongly under that impression. Very well; if they chose to play the Celt, she would play the Canadian. She spoke of Canadian Christmasses, finding in them pleasing and picturesque qualities which would surely have astonished her mother, or even those nationalist zealots, the McCorkills. She deepened the snow, intensified the cold, and enthused retrospectively about winter sports in which she had never taken part. Driving in cutters on the frozen waters of the harbour at Salterton, for instance; she had never done it, but neither did she claim to have done so; she simply described it as if at first-hand. And ice-boating—there was excitement! When she talked of these things her tongue ran away with her, and though she spoke no clear untruths, she implied a whole world which had no counterpart in her past. She did not suppress the Glue Works or the Thirteeners; she simply did not feel a necessity to mention them.

“What a liar you are!” she said one night to her image in the mirror. But the next day her resolve to guard her tongue vanished; she wanted to be as interesting as Ceinwen, whom she liked but whose rapid alternations of temperament began to excite her jealousy. The girl was playing the Gelt all over the place, muttering in Welsh to please Ripon, and teaching him Welsh objurgations, as one might teach a parrot to swear. That affair was going swimmingly, but Revelstoke had not said an intimate word to her since Christmas Eve.

It was what she did to her family which most alarmed Monica in her soberer moments. Ma Gall began to appear as a wonderfully salty character, a lady, of course, but with the strength of pioneer ancestry behind her. Ma Gall was, she told Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths, a natural gourmet, delighting in food and bringing to it family secrets which produced dishes of incomparable savour, unknown in the British Islands. This tower of mendacity was erected on the trifling foundation of a rather dull Indian Pudding which Mrs Gall had learned to make from her mother.

Of course, those who embark on such a game as this must be trapped into lies at last.

Monica’s entrapment, and her punishment, came almost at the end of her stay at Neuadd Goch. It was at dinner, on New Year’s Eve, the night of the County Ball, a festivity which was to be the crown of the entertainment provided by the Hopkin-Griffiths for their guests. Ripon, who was filled with true gratitude toward his hosts, had made them a graceful speech before dinner, saying that their kindness would never be forgotten while he lived, and that he hoped that at some future time he might pass it on, in the same spirit, to visitors to his own land. He did it well, and keeping away from talk of climates of feeling, created an atmosphere of open-hearted friendliness which inevitably led to talk of the bonds which united the English-speaking world. Monica could not contain herself.

She spoke of her admiration for and debt to the British people, and did it in such a way that there was nothing pompous or unseemly about it. But she could not leave it there. This feeling, she said, was not only her own, but had long been that of her family. The Galls, she asserted, were of United Empire Loyalist stock.