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Perhaps I do,' he admitted at last. 'But I imagine it's much more important to a woman.'

She tried hard to see his face in the almost dark, her eyes curious. 'But surely it must be important to a man as well? I should hate to think that a man had married me for any other reason than that he loved me.'

'Hmm.' The sound was non-committal. 'In your case I imagine it would scarcely be in doubt,' he said, quietly so that she only just heard him; listening to the alarmingly loud beat of her heart, she pressed her hand to her breast as if she would forcibly still it. ‘Emlyn says he loves you,' he added when she made no answer, 'so at least it wouldn't have been for any other reason as far as he was concerned.'

'But I don't love him,' she said, feeling rather as if she was rejecting him and not his son. It sounded so blunt and rather cruel put like that but there was no other way to say it and it had to be said sooner or later. 'I'm sorry,' she added softly.

'And you won't marry him?'

She shook her head. 'I can't, Evan, it wouldn't be fair to either of us. He's very nice and very attractive and I like him a lot, but that isn't enough for marriage, not for me.'

Again he was silent for a while, moving along the path behind the rose hedge that ended the garden. 'I know I have no right to ask,' he said, 'but is there—do you care for someone else?'

The question, she realized, would at one time have made her very angry, but now she felt only wonderment that he should have asked it.

'
I—I'm not sure. I don't mind you asking in the least, but I'm not sure; that certainly isn't the reason for my refusing to marry Emlyn, though.'

‘I see.' He sounded thoughtful. 'When are you going to tell Emlyn?'

She now found the darkness a disadvantage for she could not see his face to judge what he wanted her answer to be. 'I don't know, I hadn't really thought. I'm afraid I'm a coward about doing things like that.'

'Or soft-hearted,' he said gently as if he understood her feelings and her reluctance. 'That would better fit the picture, I think.'

'
I suppose I should have told him before this,' she sighed, 'but it's so difficult to know the right time with Emlyn. I shall have to tell him soon, of course, but perhaps the longer I leave it the easier it will be. I keep hoping so anyway.'

'You'll tell him yourself?'

She tried again to see his face, to judge his expression, but it was useless; all she could distinguish of his features was the dark glow of his eyes.

'Who else could I expect to tell him?' she asked. 'It's not a thing one can delegate, is it?'

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I suppose not,' he admitted. 'I did try to warn him several times, but you know Emlyn, he only hears what he wants to hear.'

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She smiled. 'I know. I was hoping that when he comes downstairs and starts to live more normally again that he won't be quite so single-minded about it. Of course,' she added, venturing on to delicate ground, 'it would be a great help if he saw someone else sometimes, had some visitors, now that he's so much better.'

He fell silent again, his hands busy among the buds on one of the rose trees which drooped heavily with the rain. He broke the stem of one of them and held it for a moment before handing it to her. 'You're trying to tell me that I should let Tracey Owen come here and see him, is that it?'

'
Yes,' she admitted, holding the rose between her two hands gently so as not to crush it. 'But not only Tracey, others too. He needs company, Evan, more than anything else at the moment, he needs his friends around him. It will do more to get him into a normal state of mind than anything else I can think of.'

'
You don't consider being in love with you to be a normal state of mind?'

'
No.' She shook her head, holding the rose where she could smell the scent of it. '1 think that if he sees other people and takes an interest in other things he'll be different.'

'
I wouldn't guarantee that,' he said, 'but if you think it will help—' It would not be easy for him to give in, she realized that, nor would he easily reconcile himself to the idea of a stream of Emlyn's visitors in the house, but it was a step towards the solution of her own problem, and he seemed as anxious to have it solved as she was herself.

'
Doctor Neath thinks it would be a good idea,' she said, and was surprised to hear him laugh shortly as if he found the situation amusing.

'
I suppose you and the doctor have been planning this, haven't you? You seem to have quite a lot of ideas in common.'

'We have this one,' she admitted. 'And you did admit to me once that the doctor was usually right.'

'Hmm. I seem to remember that I did.'

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It really would help,' she urged, sensing his weakening. 'It would be very good for him to see someone else other than me occasionally.'

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It seems I'm out-voted,' he said dryly, but she could detect no resentment in the admission, merely reluctance,

'You agree?'

'
I didn't say that, but I suppose I have been rather selfish isolating him as I have; because I dislike a house full of strangers, I make Emlyn suffer for it.'

'You do nothing of the sort!' she told him indignantly, as if it were another she was defending. 'No one could have been more devoted or patient with Emlyn; you've been wonderful. He's wanted for nothing.'

'Except company,' he said. 'I'm inclined to forget that he is as much Howell as Davies. They like a lot of company always and a lot of noise.' Remembering the flamboyant Alun Howell in the Golden Harp, Helen found this quite easy to believe.

'He's still very much a Davies,' she declared, and added, encouraged by his speaking so freely, 'especially when he's demanding to have his own way.'

His quiet laugh surprised her, making her feel suddenly that there was something more intimate in their conversation, and she held the cool wetness of the rose he had given her to her face, seeking to steady her heart which was behaving erratically again.

'
Then he must get his less sociable characteristics from me,' he said dryly, and went on before she could confirm or deny it, 'what shall we do about Tracey Owen?'

'
I—I don't know.' His asking for her advice on anything at all, she realized, was the final capitulation and in some strange way she regretted it; to ask it on the subject of Tracey Owen was even more surprising after the way they had disagreed about her. 'I could see her and ask her to come and see Emlyn if that's what you want, but please don't let me influence you against your will.'

'
You already have,' he told her, and taking her arm started back towards the house. His admission reminded her of the informative and rather embarrassing talk she had had with Mrs Beeley two weeks ago, when the housekeeper had commented on Helen's likeness to Mrs Clifford Davies. 'She could get him to do anything she wanted,' the woman had said, and now Evan was admitting that she had influenced his decision regarding Tracey Owen against his own desires. It was possibly a small victory, but she felt quite pleased with it.

It was difficult for her to persuade Emlyn next morning that it was not possible for him to come downstairs until later in the day. He had been loudly persistent that he be allowed down immediately after breakfast. Evan and Dai Hughes carried him between them on a chair, as Doctor Neath had advised, and sat him in one of the armchairs where he looked around him delightedly. The only filing he objected to was having a blanket put over his legs and tucked in round him. 'I look like some old grandpa with this thing round me,' he protested.

The room looked and seemed different somehow with Emlyn there, and Helen was surprised to find that she saw his presence as an intrusion. His boisterous good humour disturbed the quiet and tranquillity of it and she found herself resenting it rather more than was reasonable. It seemed that never again would that big, quiet room be the same, and the thought gave her a nostalgic sadness that was not in keeping with the satisfaction she should have felt at her patient's recovery.

When Doctor Neath came the following day he gave her Tracey Owen's address with no more than a quirked eyebrow for comment, but he smiled his satisfaction when she explained her reason for wanting it. 'There you are, you see,' he told her. 'It's no use trying to drive Evan, you have to lead him gently.'

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I didn't exactly lead him,' Helen said, suspecting the bright twinkle with which the old man regarded her. 'I just said that I thought Emlyn should have some visitors now that he's better and he automatically mentioned Tracey Owen. I didn't try to influence him really.'

^f
But you did, whether you were trying or not,' Doctor Neath chuckled. 'I told you that if anyone could work a miracle on Evan it would be you.' The bright eyes looked at her fondly. ‘You're very like Margaret was, you know, my dear—Evan's mother. She was a lovely woman and she could manage Clifford, her husband, like no one else could.'

'
So I've been told,' Helen admitted, 'by Mrs Beeley.'

'And it's quite true. You are like her, and in more than one way from the sound of it.'

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I'm flattered,' Helen laughed, remembering what Owen had said about his uncle having had designs on Margaret Davies himself. 'I also heard that you rather cared for Mrs Davies yourself. When she was Miss Jenkins, of course,' she added hastily. It may have been the name Jenkins that prompted her memory and reminded her of the old woman at Lake Olwen, but, almost without realizing it she asked the old doctor, 'Do you speak Welsh, Doctor Neath?'

‘I do,' he admitted, looking at her curiously. 'Why do you ask?'

'
There's something—something I heard once,' she said, and repeated the words that she still remembered, though she could not reproduce the accent nor quite the correct pronunciation. 'What does it mean?'

The old man corrected her accent and repeated the words in Welsh, then translated them into English. 'Love him well, sweetheart, love him well.' He spoke the words softly, his eyes on her face, a trace of smile round his mouth. 'May I know where you heard it, my dear?'

Helen twined her fingers together, not looking at him. 'It was at Lake Olwen,' she said. 'The old woman who lives in the cottage there; she offered to tell me my fortune if Evan would translate, as she speaks no English and her son was away, but when she did Evan refused to tell me what she said. I can't remember any more than those few words and she called them after me as we Walked away, over and over as if they were important. Evan wouldn't tell me what they meant.'

'No,' the doctor said dryly with a smile, 'he wouldn't.'

The appearance of Evan himself had put a stop to any further conversation on those lines, but once or twice during the next few minutes Helen saw the old doctor looking speculatively from one to the other of them and she hoped he would not take it into his head to say anything about the old woman and her advice. She thanked heaven too, that she had not done as she had at first intended and asked Emlyn to translate the words.

She was glad to find Tracey Owen looking very much better than the last time she had seen her, distraught and tearful, at Glyntarrach. She still seemed to have a slightly haunted look about her dark eyes and her face was much thinner and paler than it should have been, but she greeted Helen with a smile when she came into the room escorted by Mrs Owen. The woman treated Helen with an almost embarrassing gratitude. 'I really did mean to see you before, Miss Gaynor,' she said, 'and thank you for what you did for Tracey, but it's impossible to go near that house with Evan Davies as he is.'

'It was Mr Davies' idea that I come and see Tracey,' Helen told her. 'He was a very worried man at that time, Mrs Owen, and he was sorry about the incident afterwards, I'm sure you understand.'

The woman looked as if she doubted the truth of that, but she made no further comment, content to let her looks voice her opinion. She spoke in the same sing-song accent that Dai Hughes used and Helen was rather surprised to hear it; mainly she supposed because of Tracey's more cultured way of speaking. Obviously the Owens had made money in some way and their daughter had been well educated. 'It was very good of you to come,' she said. 'I don't think it was very popular up there when young Emlyn started going about with our Tracey, but he's a nice boy, pleasant and fond of a bit of fun. More like his mam's family, see.'

She chattered on gaily, giving Helen no chance to talk to the girl alone as she would like to have done. Mr Owen it appeared, had made a lot of money from a chain of ladies' hairdressing salons that he had been wise enough to invest in and his daughter wanted for nothing in the way of material comforts, hence the ownership of the fast and expensive sports car she had been driving on the night Emlyn was hurt. They lived fairly lavishly, but still lived in the same little cottage they had always occupied and where Tracey had been born. Its interior had been altered beyond recognition and it was rather too ostentatious for Helen's taste, but there was no doubt that the transformation must have cost a great deal of money, so that there could be no ulterior motive in Mrs Owen's approval of Emlyn as her daughter's boy-friend.

Tracey was delighted when she heard the reason for Helen's visit and her dark eyes glowed softly at the thought of seeing Emlyn again. ‘You're sure it will be all right?' she asked anxiously. ‘Mr Davies won't mind?'

‘He asked me to come,' Helen assured her. ‘You will come, won't you, Tracey?'

‘Of course I will!' She smiled shyly, taking advantage of her mother's brief temporary absence to speak more openly. ‘I—I think I told you how I feel about Emlyn didn't I, Miss Gaynor?' Her eyes pleaded for understanding.

'I know you love him, Tracey,' Helen said softly, 'but give him time to know his own mind; he's a little confused at the moment and he doesn't really know what he wants, but when he's completely fit again, he'll tell you how he feels, I'm sure of it.' She hoped fervently that she was not misleading the girl, but she felt that with her own departure from Glyntarrach he would almost certainly turn to the girl again. It had been obvious from the few words he had spoken about her to Helen, that he was fond of her.