We knew Nature in all her moods.  In every aspect we found the sea, the wood, and the meadows happy and beautiful—­in winter as in summer, in storm as in sunshine.  In the foggy days of November, in the sharp winds of March, in the snows and sleet and rain of February, we used to hear other people complain of the bad weather; we used to hear them fret for change.  But we despised them for their ignorance where we were so learned.  There was no bad weather for us.  In March, what so delicious as breasting together the brave wind, and feeling it tingle our cheeks and beat our ears till we laughed at each other with joy?  In rain, what so delicious as to stand under a tree or behind a hedge and listen to the drops pattering overhead among the leaves, and see the fields steaming up to meet them?  Then again the soft falling of snow upon the lonely fields, while the very sheep looked brown against the whiteness gathering round them.  All beautiful to us two, and beloved!

VI

‘But where was this little boy’s mother all this time?’ you naturally ask; ’where was his father?  In a word, who was he? and what were his surroundings?’

I will answer these queries in as brief a fashion as possible.

My father, Philip Aylwin, belonged to a branch of an ancient family which had been satirically named by another branch of the same family ‘The Proud Aylwins.’

It is a singular thing that it was the proud Aylwins who had a considerable strain of Gypsy blood in their veins.  My great-grandfather had married Fenella Stanley, the famous Gypsy beauty, about whom so much was written in the newspapers and magazines of that period.  She had previously when a girl of sixteen married a Lovell who died and left a child.  Fenella’s portrait in the character of the Sibyl of Snowdon was painted by the great portrait painter of that time.

This picture still hangs in the portrait gallery of Raxton Hall.

As a child it had an immense attraction for me, and no wonder, for it was original to actual eccentricity.  It depicted a dark young woman of dazzling beauty standing at break of day among mountain scenery, holding a musical instrument of the guitar kind, but shaped like a violin, upon the lower strings of which she was playing with the thumb of the left hand.

Through the misty air were seen all kinds of shadowy shapes, whose eyes were fixed on the player.  I used to stand and look at this picture by the hour together, fascinated by the strange beauty of the singer’s face and the mysterious, prophetic expression in the eyes.

And I used to try to imagine what tune it was that could call from the mountain air the ‘flower sprites’ and ‘sunshine elves’ of morning on the mountain.

Fenella Stanley seems in her later life to have set up as a positive seeress, and I infer from certain family papers and diaries in my possession that she was the very embodiment of the wildest Romany beliefs and superstitions.